Fish In A Tree

by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Teachers are like the machines that take quarters for bouncy balls. You know what you’re going to get. Yet, you don’t know, too.

Sit down,” Mrs. Hall says, but it’s too late. You can’t make people unhear something. I should be used to this, but it still takes a piece out of me every time.

I wish she could understand my world. But it would be like trying to explain to a whale what it’s like to live in the forest.

“You know,” he says, “logically, if a person was to pull another down, it would mean that he or she is already below that person.”

He comes over and does something a teacher has never done even once in my whole life. He high-fives me.

Funny how my brain wants to make things complicated and his just cuts to the simplest thing. Well, the simplest thing with a bunch of fancy words and mile-long sentences.

An older brother is older. A big brother looks out for you and smiles when you walk into a room.”

‘Everyone is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking that it’s stupid.’”

My grandpa used to say to be careful with eggs and words, because neither can ever be fixed.

And isn’t it funny—I’ve gone from invisible to invincible.

I guess maybe “I’m having trouble” is not the same as “I can’t.”

Then he stops walking and he’s wide-eyed looking at me. It gives me a chill the way he does it. “But really,” he says, “it just made everything hurt inside to watch them hurt you two, and I would have done anything in the universe to stop it.”

“That reminds me of our president Teddy Roosevelt, who went on a hunting trip and found that one of his companions tied a bear to a tree for him so it would be easy to shoot. He refused to shoot the bear and set it free. In fact, that’s why teddy bears are called Teddy. After that president and that day.”