ChapterOne
The Optiontunist

    My life began more than twenty years ago on a sunny autumn morning when I was eleven years old. It was the first day of sixth grade in a chalky, colorful classroom to which my mind constantly returns - not because I consider it the place I drew my first true breath, but rather because of what occurred which allowed that breath. For in that room, a string of events was set in motion, resulting in the entangled feelings like those felt when a loved one peacefully dies after too much suffering. I’m simultaneously haunted and inspired by these events and I often look back and yearn for the strange mixture of solace and sadness which began the moment I met Dale Tarleton.
    He was wearing a lime green polyester shirt with white metal snaps instead of buttons, and brown corduroys upon which he spent a great deal of time hoeing an uneven field by scratching his fingers back and forth. He also had brand new black canvas sneakers with white leather stripes stitched at angles on either side. I thought that was pretty smart of him, or his parents, because anyone with new sneakers - especially a new student - usually spent half of recess being chased by kids who then spent the other half stepping on his sneakers to dirty them up. So it was smart because Dale’s new black sneakers couldn’t have looked any dirtier.
    For some reason - even though we never used them - adolescent boys in the 1970’s had to carry black combs. I wore my hair as long as my parents would allow, and every couple of minutes I’d jerk my head to the right, hoping my hair had grown long enough to swing coolly into place like the rock musicians and other celebrities with bad haircuts whom I so greatly admired. But still I carried a comb in the back pocket of my jeans. However, Dale didn’t display the usual quarter inch of black teeth from his back pocket.
    The teeth in his mouth were prominent, though. Slightly bucked, they were separated by a dark, crooked hollowness like the opening to a cave. His eyes were black and shiny, like ice on a midnight road, and were sunken into tan skin which tightly encased his face like shrink wrap. I have a photograph of Dale from these days tacked to my office wall and I understand the double take of those who first glance at it. It’s easy to mistake Dale for a drunken farmer or a horribly mistreated donkey.
    Our classroom had the antiseptic smell and freshly-painted walls of the First Day. The virginal chalkboard faced us blankly while its wooden ledge unsuccessfully hid the unused sticks of chalk - powdery bullets of education. A giant bright globe with the names of all the countries in the world sat on a shelf. When I skulked into the classroom, I gave the globe a spin and stopped it randomly. My finger had landed on Burma and I wondered if a Burmese student did the same, his index finger scratching at some strange place called Rhode Island. The teacher’s desk, heavy and grey like a bank vault, was further weighted down with books, a wooden pointer and a calendar opened to the worst month of the year. And the bright sunshine taunted me from the freedom outside the windows. I still remember how bored I’d been just a few weeks earlier and how I would have given anything for a second chance at summer vacation.
    Many times, I’ve closed my eyes and thought of another, more pertinent, second chance. But because I know that’s impossible, my mind shifts gears and I try to think of the most fitting analogy for that first morning of school and my life. The closest I’ve come is that of the heroic football player who dwells incessantly on only one play in his entire career. I think of myself as the player and meeting Dale as that play. Unlike the other players who consider their lives to have stopped when the whistle blew on their heroics, my most important play - or person - gave me the gift of a future, the ability to see it and, most importantly, the willingness to possess it.

____

    Of course at the time, it didn’t seem momentous at all. I couldn’t know the impact this buck-toothed stranger would have on me; in fact, it started rather ordinarily. I was sitting at my desk, holding the wooden and formica desk top above my head as I struggled to put my school things inside. A few weeks earlier, my mother had bought a yellow Partridge Family lunch box for me, which I was carefully trying to fit into my desk without scratching the paint. As I moved things around the shallow desk, I heard a little laugh and, looking up, I noticed Dale in the row next to me.
    “Can’t fit it in?” he asked.
    “I’m trying to.”
    “Maybe if you could take Tracy Partridge off the front it would fit better. I don’t think anyone will miss her - she doesn’t really do all that much.”
    “You don’t like the Partridge Family?” I asked, withdrawing my head from the desk and putting the lunch box on the floor.
    “No, I like ’em okay. But Tracy bugs me. All she does is bang the tambourine. Why do they need her for that?”
    “I don’t know....”
    “I mean, at least they could give her something to say once in a while. But they never even do that very much. I think it would be rotten to have to be Tracy Partridge.”
    “But she is a TV star,” I reasoned.
    “She’s not really a star. She just stands there, banging her tambourine. How does that make her a star?”
    I slid the lunch box under my desk and challenged him.
    “Well, who do you like? ”
    “Elvis Presley. He’s the King of rock ‘n’ roll.”
    “You mean that fat guy with the weird clothes?”
    “He doesn’t have weird clothes.”
    “He’s fat, though.”
    “Well..., at least he’s a real star. And at least he’s not in a band with his mother. That’s weird.”
    I slid the lunch box even further under my desk.
    “What’s your name?” I asked.
    “Dale Tarleton. ”
    “I’m Kevin Ridley.” I sized him up, then stated, “You’re new. ”
    “No. I’m just from California.”
    “Really? I never knew anybody from California before. What’s it like?”
    “Well, there’s lots of palm trees that don’t belong there.”
    “Why not?”
    “’Cause some Spanish guy brought them over from Florida.”
    “You mean like oranges?”
    “Kinda, but they weren’t a gift. And now everybody just thinks they belong there. But they don’t - not really.”
    “Huh.”
    “Anyway, my family just moved here. We used to live in Providence.”
    “There aren’t any palm trees in Rhode Island, you know,” I said, hoping this news wouldn’t be too disappointing.
    “Yeah. But there aren’t supposed to be, so that’s good.”
    A couple of kids came over to my desk and I introduced them to Dale. They asked him about California and if he knew any movie stars and if he’d ever gone surfing. During the middle of their questions, a kid we called UpChuck, because of his recurring habit of throwing up at lunch, butted into the conversation and asked if we knew who our teacher was. By his very nature, UpChuck was intrusive, but something in his expression revealed he had secret information, so we paid him more attention than usual.
    “I heard she came from the high school,” I said.
    “But do you know why she came from the high school?” UpChuck smiled mysteriously.
    “No, why?” another kid said.
    “She quit ’cause a bunch of kids beat her up.”
    “That’s baloney, UpChuck!”
    “No it’s not, Ridley. My older brother had her for math and he knew the kids who did it. She was real mean so these kids ganged up on her and now she’s afraid to go back. They scared her real bad. My brother told me.”
    “Your brother pukes more than you do.”
    The accusations flew until our teacher walked in the door. She didn’t look particularly mean. She was an old Southern woman with powdery skin, bright blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. Tall and stiff, she had fat calves like balloons in her nylons, and two gold eye teeth. She also smelled funny. Her frilly, lace blouse and grey, plaid skirt had that overripe, mothball odor that lived in the closets at my grandmother’s house. 
    Like scared rodents, we scrambled for our seats. Our new teacher didn’t say a word, but instead, stood behind her bank vault desk and reached for the wooden pointer. Picking up a fresh piece of chalk, she turned to the board and wrote large, squeaky letters which travelled up our spines:
    Good morning. My name is Mrs. Philbrain.
    Then, using the pointer like a weapon, she rapped it against the board, gesturing for us to repeat each word as she touched it.
    “Good morning,” we all said. “My name is Mrs....”
    Everyone stopped and she rapped again, a bit harder, for encouragement. But still we struggled, trying to form the strange word through our murmurs. Finally Dale raised his hand.  “Yes?” she asked. Her jaws snapped quickly like a bear trap - a warning against stealing the golden treasure embedded in her gums.
   “Mrs....P Hill Brain?”
    We laughed. The teacher glared angrily at us, but Dale asked with all seriousness:
    “Isn’t that what it says?”
    “No,” she answered, giving the rest of us a condescending glance before smiling at Dale: the example of a child really interested in learning. “A ‘p’ and an ‘h’ make an f-f-f, sound,” reiterating the ‘f’ three times as if to drill it into our heads. Then she said to Dale in her soft Southern voice, “ Now, try again.”
    Dale read the whole sentence:
    “My name is Mrs.,” and he stopped for a moment, looking at her with a bit of uncertainty. Mrs. Philbrain nodded with bright, wide eyes and so Dale said: “Mrs. F-F-Filbrain.”
    We laughed again and it was when Mrs. Philbrain admonished Dale that we realized she was a stutterer.
    “N-n-no! My n-n-name is Mrs. Ph-ph-philbrain,” she stuttered, her accent now hardened. And then we realized something else - it must have been true! She must have been attacked by the high school kids - kids who literally scared her speechless!
    Dale raised his hand again.
    “Yes?”
    “Mrs. Philbrain. Why does the ‘ph’ sound like an ‘f’?”
    Dale’s sensible question helped soften the teacher.
    “Be-be-because when a p-p-p and an h-h-h are pu-pu-put together, they make an f-f-f-f sound.”
    “But why? Doesn’t the ‘f’ do a good enough job of making the ‘f’ sound all by itself?”
    The gold in Mrs. Philbrain’s mouth gleamed - she was obviously pleased with the chance to explain a phonetics lesson on her first day.
    “Yes, but -”
    “Is there another sound that a ‘p’ and an ‘h’ make besides an ‘f ’?”
    “N-n-n-no, there isn’t. A p-p-p h-h-h only makes a-a-an ‘f’ sound.”
    “But...why? ”
    And so, Mrs. Philbrain went on to explain why a ‘ph’ only makes an ‘f’ sound. But after the twenty-five-minute explanation, complete with stutters and Dale’s interrupting questions, her golden smile had dulled and she had hardened again.

____

    We eventually found out that Mrs. Philbrain had transferred to our elementary school after teaching high school for almost forty years. This was her last year before she was to retire and she wanted to instruct at an elementary school as she’d done when she began teaching. Because she’d had such an illustrious career (as well as a nephew on the school board - after all, this was in Rhode Island) she was allowed to spend her final year teaching our sixth grade class. However, this never diminished our belief in the story of the high school bullies.
    “They really must’ve done a job on her,” Dale said to me one afternoon. We were at my house. I’d invited Dale to come over and play in the backyard.
    My yard had about ten yards of grass and then a little rock garden with steps leading down to a long hill. The hill ended at a weathered picket fence. Beyond that was a murky swamp with rivers like veins cutting through the tall grass. During moon tide, the rivers bled over the swamp, completely submerging it, but other times, when the tide was out and it was very hot, the swamp was damp and muddy and it stank.
    I had a swing which my father had made by tying an old tire to a high oak branch, and Dale and I were taking turns swinging out over the hill. I got in the tire and pushed off, sailing into the air.
    “I bet they pulled knives on her.”
    Dale stood behind me, pushing each time I came back.
    “Why knives?”
    “Why not? Everybody pulls knives on people. It’s scary.” I swung back to Dale and he pushed me harder. As I whizzed up and then backwards, I heard him say:
    “What about matches?”
    I dug my Keds into the ground and skidded to a dirt-piling stop.
    “Matches?!”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who would try to scare someone with matches?”
    “I dunno.”
    “Have you ever heard of somebody scaring someone with matches?”
    “No,” he admitted.
    “Then how do you know it would be scary?”
    Dale thought a moment and said:
    “How do you know it wouldn’t be?”
    I didn’t answer. Instead I held onto the prickly rope and twirled in the tire, trying to imagine the terrifying aspects of matches.

____

    Dale’s philosophy was simple - anything was possible. Ironically, this fit perfectly with a certain type of test Mrs. Philbrain liked to give - the multiple guess.
    A multiple guess test was different from a multiple choice because in a multiple guess, every answer is somehow correct. To Dale, this was academic nirvana. To others, like my father, it was academic lunacy.
    “What the hell is she teaching you kids?! Or should I say, what isn’t she teaching you?”
    “Now, Ed...,” my mother began, giving me a chance to explain. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite explain the reason behind a test in which there was no wrong answer. In hindsight, I should have had Dale explain it to my father. Dale would have told him that in a multiple guess test, the point isn’t that every answer is correct. The trick is in finding - and supporting - the most correct answer.
    “Why should there be just one right answer?” Dale once asked me.
    But I wasn’t sure.
    “Because that’s how it is,” I said, repeating my father’s sentiment.
    “How what is?”
    I told Dale that my father had said there was only one right answer in a test, and that was the reason for taking a test in the first place.
    But Dale didn’t buy that. Had he been born in another time, Dale would have made a great speech writer for the Kennedys. There’s a quote by Robert Kennedy that says “Some men see things as they are and ask why? I dream things that never were and ask why not?” Dale could have written that for Robert Kennedy. And despite my father’s general dislike of the Kennedys, Dale could have used the quote advantageously in his explanation of the multiple guess test.
    Dale subscribed to the multiple guess mentality. At eleven years old, when most kids took things for granted, Dale questioned everything. Would we be better off without Tracy Partridge, is there another combination of letters that make an “f” sound better that the “f” itself, and why couldn’t a gang of match-wielding teenagers be terrifying? Dale needed to know “why not?”
    It quickly became apparent to Mrs. Philbrain that Dale needed to know every choice and every option, and whenever his skinny arm shot up, her face became marred with an expression like a unevenly rising cake. Mrs. Philbrain had taught school for a long time, but I don’t think she ever truly knew what she was up against with Dale. 
    Which is why, on a cloudy October morning, she probably shouldn’t have told us that we were going to have a duck and cover drill. Then again, it wasn’t in her power to stop the drill - even in the mid-seventies, our whole school practiced these air raid drills. But just as she had no choice about taking those little yellow pills we’d seen, she had no choice in this matter.
    So, Mrs. Philbrain took a deep breath and, after a quick look over at Dale, explained the procedure.
    “N-n-now class, when y-y-you hear the siren over the loud speaker, y-y-y-you’ll all g-g-get down under your desks and remain t-t-there until I g-g-give the all c-c-clear signal.”
    Dale’s hand immediately shot up. For a moment it appeared that Mrs. Philbrain was pretending she didn’t see him. But he persisted, frantically waving his entire arm like a flag in a storm. There was no way out. Mrs. Philbrain sighed.
    “Yes, Dale?”
    “Why are we getting under our desks, Mrs. Philbrain?”
    She moaned slightly as if she had a headache, and answered:
    “B-b-because that’s the p-p-proper procedure, Dale.” But again, Dale raised his hand and again she sighed and called upon him.
    “Mrs. Philbrain, what are we supposed to do under our desks?”
    “J-j-just c-c-crouch d-d-d-down and put your h-h-hands over your h-h-heads.”
    “But why?”
    “I t-t-told you, Dale, that’ s the p-p-procedure.”
    “Well, do you think getting under the desks will really help?”
    Confusion bent Mrs. Philbrain’s face.
    “Help w-w-what?”
    “Save us from the bombs. I mean, do you think the desks will really do any good? What if a plane drops a bomb right on top of the school?”
    Nervous murmuring filled the classroom. Mrs. Philbrain began shushing everybody. A look of pain peeked out from behind her eyes and she rummaged through her purse and took out the small dark bottle we’d seen a number of times. Opening the bottle, she withdrew one of the mysterious yellow oval pills and placed it under her tongue. Then, after a minute, the pain went back into hiding.
    “It’s all right, c-c-class,” she said soothingly. “N-n-o one is going t-t-to drop a bomb on the sc-sc-school.”
    But Dale persisted.
    “Then why are we practicing for it? I mean, it would be silly to practice for an air raid if we didn’t think we’d ever have one, wouldn’t it?”
    The murmuring grew louder but still Dale proceeded.
    “Somebody thinks we might really get bombed. So if a bomb lands on the school, do you think the desks will save us?”
    A few kids became hysterical. Two girls were crying, and UpChuck rocked quickly in his seat while the stain where he wet his pants spread across the crotch of his corduroys.
    Mrs. Philbrain began rapping her pointer on the desk, but it did no good.
    “C-c-class, s-s-settle down, n-n-n-now, please!”
    “I wanna go home,” one girl wailed. “I want my Mommy!!”
    “Class, th-th-there’s nothing to b-b-b-be worried about. ”
    “Well, maybe not this time because it’s only for practice,” Dale said. “But what about when the bombs really do get dropped?” And then his eyes got very wide, as he asked, “Will we really just burst into flames and be gone like in the movies?”
    “D-d-dale!” cried Mrs. Philbrain.
    Unfortunately, it was at that exact moment when the siren screamed over the loudspeaker.
    “Help!!” the kids shrieked, and they jumped up and stampeded out the door.
    “Class!! Stop that. C-c-come back!”
    But half the class was already running through the halls, screaming “Air raid! Air raid! Help!”
    More pain creased Mrs. Philbrain’s face and she quickly took another pill and put it under her tongue. I looked out the door, hearing the echos of running feet and the kids’ shouts, and when I turned back, I noticed hesitant relief showed on her face, though she glared at Dale before stomping out of the room to chase after the kids. I looked over to find Dale under the desk.
    “What are you doing down there?”
    “This is where we’re supposed to be,” Dale replied.
    “But I thought you said the desks wouldn’t save us.”
    “No, I just asked if they would. And I don’t think they will. But it’s always a good idea to find out all you can about things.”
    And so, to me Dale became known as the “optiontunist.”  Never content with one right or wrong answer, Dale would be in constant search for the best answer.

____

    On Veterans’ Day weekend, Dale invited me to sleep over at his house. During that weekend, I got an insight to where he had acquired his optiontunistity.
    I found it strange that Dale was an only child. I had two older brothers and a sister and most of the other kids at school seemed to have large families as well. I was used to being in noisy houses, houses echoing with the sounds of crashes and destruction, crying children, panic-filled voices trying to quiet the crying kids, yelling parents - to me, these were normal-sounding homes. But Dale’s house was oddly quiet; Dale’s house was unnaturally peaceful.
    But even more bizarre was the relationship Dale had with his parents. Like other kids, Dale demanded as much, if not more, attention from his parents. But unlike other parents, they gave it to him.
    Everyone knows it’s common protocol for kids to shout questions all at once - “can I have a sandwich?” “will you tie my shoe?” “if Jenny can then why can’t I?” “what time are we going?” And of course, it’s also only natural for parents to answer in grunts - “no,” “yes,” “because,” and sometimes the always-confusing “ when I say so” - while the face of every parent is waxed over with the same expression: the look of being too tired to answer kids. As children, we had unlimited energy; as parents they had unending weariness. But that’s how it had always been. That’s how it was supposed to be.
    That’s what I thought until I met Mr. and Mrs. Tarleton.
    Dale’s parents supplied answers with enough energy to equal his barrage of questions. His parents were never too tired for him. I thought this might be because Dale was an only child. That would undoubtedly explain their tremendous staying power - they could focus all their attention on him rather than spread it out amongst three or four kids. But there was more to it than concentrated energy. That Sunday evening, I witnessed something extremely foreign to me. Dale and his parents had a conversation - a conversation in which they spoke to him in complete sentences!
    Before dinner, we had all watched The Miracle Worker on Channel 56. During a commercial, after going to the bathroom, I saw Mrs. Tarleton in the kitchen, cutting up potatoes and putting them into a pot of boiling water.
    “What are you making?” I asked her.
    “Mashed potatoes.”
    I peered dubiously into the bubbling pot.
    “Where’s the box?”
    She looked at me and then gave a little nervous laugh as if I were putting her on. I wasn’t. Whenever my family had mashed potatoes, they started out as white flakes from a Hungry Man carton.
    When we sat around the dinner table, Mrs. Tarleton announced we were to say grace. She bowed her head and I awkwardly followed the family through the “Bless Oh Lord this food...” grace, and felt guilty for not speaking louder. I didn’t know this blessing all the way through; my family used the old standby “God is Great, God is Good” blessing.
    When we finally finished, I looked around to make sure nobody at the table thought any less of me and then turned my attention to the brown specks of potato skins dotting my white mountain. Dale swallowed a bit of his mountain and, after wiping his mouth, asked his father what he thought it would be like to have been Helen Keller.
    Mr. Tarleton put down his fork, folded his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. At first, I thought he was going to answer the way the father in the TV commercial for the Boston Museum of Science answered his son’s questions about what makes the sky blue: “I don ’t know, but I know where we can find out,” and the two go have a great time at the museum. I never liked that ad - whenever I saw it, I thought that was the kind of question I’d want my dad to be able to answer himself, even if he had to make something up. So I was relieved - and intrigued - when Mr. Tarleton said:
    “In what way?”
    “What do you think it felt like learning all the things Helen Keller did?”
    “Give me an example, Dale.”
    “Well..., like colors. The lady Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller about colors. For red, she burned Helen’s hand to teach her that red is a ‘hot’ color.”
    “That’s right, she did,” Mrs. Tarleton said, laughing nervously like a jammed machine gun. Mrs. Tarleton was a pretty woman but her nervous giggling sometimes made me forget just how pretty she was.
    Dale took a drink of milk and then asked:
    “How did she know that red can mean hot?”
    Mr. and Mrs. Tarleton looked at each other for a moment, giving me a chance to jump in.
    “Because she burned Helen’s hand.”
    “But how did Anne know that Helen would put hot and red together?”
    I thought about that before offering what I thought was a logical answer.
    “Well. When a stove gets hot, the coils get red.”
    “Do they?” asked Mr. Tarleton, catching me by surprise. I couldn’t think of anything to say except to tell him that they did on my mother’s stove.
    “But how do you know they’re red, Kevin?” he asked. As I stumbled for an answer, I wondered if going to a museum wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
    “Well, I’ve seen ’em,” and for support, I added, “and so have you, Dale!”
    “But...,” and Dale paused before asking, “how do I know that red is the same for you as it is for me?”
    Was this Dale’s own version of multiple guess? Red is red. I knew that much and I began to see things from my father’s point of view.
    “Why would you think that, Dale?” Mrs. Tarleton asked through a stilted chuckle. It was the kind of laugh that suggested the family played this game every night - a nightly contest in which Dale could win extra Cool Whip.
    “Well..., what color is this?” he asked, pointing to his napkin.  “White,” his mother smiled.
    “But how do you know?”
    “Because this is what white is.”
    “But who told you?”
    “Dale, honey, nobody told me. I know it’s white because this is what white looks like.”
    “But how do you know white looks like this?”
    I must admit that I was now expecting a “because I say so.” I thought for sure that Mrs. Tarleton would have to revert to the parents ’ rule book and get tired. But instead she said: “Well, it’s the same color as the refrigerator and that’s white. The salesman told me. So the napkin and the refrigerator are both white.”
    “But Mom, how do I know that I’m seeing the same color you are?”
    Mr. and Mrs. Tarleton looked at each other and now I was afraid for Dale. In my family, this would be considered overstepping a boundary. “Honor thy father and mother,” as my own father was fond of saying, usually before adding “never question your parents.” I was certain Dale would get yelled at for contradicting his mother, and because I hated when parents yelled at their kids in front of me, I made a show out of reaching for the mashed potatoes in hopes that the family hadn’t forgotten I was present. However, Mr. Tarleton merely smiled at his wife and said, “He’s got you there.” Then he turned to Dale. “Now what makes you think that you’re seeing something different from your mother?”
    “Well, remember we saw The War of the Worlds last Saturday?”
    “Yes.”
    “Remember when they got the eye from the Martian and hooked it up to that film projector thing?”
    I’d seen the movie on TV as well and I thought back to the scene where the scientists gathered in a room to show how the Martians viewed the humans. By hooking up the eye of a captured alien to a machine like an overhead projector, the scientists demonstrated how the Martians saw the humans as being all fat and blobby-looking.
    “But, we’re not Martians!” I interjected.
    “No, we’re not,” he agreed. “But nobody’s hooked up your eyeball to any film projector. And they haven’t hooked up mine, either. So how do we know we’re all seeing the same thing?”
    I couldn’t answer him. Mr. Tarleton chuckled and ruffled his son’s hair. Mrs. Tarleton gave her little nervous laugh. But I sat there, looking from Dale to his parents to my mashed potatoes. Something was awkward. The Tarletons acted as if Dale had just won an award at school. But Dale just sat and smiled, looking very much like a boy who didn’t fully understand why he’d won.

____

That night, as I was lying in bed, I wondered if Mr. Tarleton’s business was responsible for the love of options in the family. After all, Dale’s father owned a large bakery which supplied cookies and cakes to all the big New England grocery stores. This seemed to me to be the kind of job where options - variety - were the most important ingredient. I assumed that the family trait stemmed from the business just as I thought my father, who was a chemist, influenced me. My dad used to take me to his lab and show me the various beakers, scales and titrating devices. The exactitude of his work carried over in his appearance; my father had very neatly trimmed hair, wore pressed pants and shirts and carried the odor of the lab around with him every evening. The smell was not only consistent but also seemed an extension of him; not only did it follow him home and linger on his clothes, years later, it would jump out from letters he would write me or packages he’d send.  My father’s influence on me was apparent in many ways, as was Dale’s.
    In appearance, Mr. Tarleton was cut out to be a baker. A big man with chocolate brown hair and a frosted grey mustache, he looked like he was made of gingerbread. He had a wide, friendly smile, as happy as candy, and when he came home from work, he brought a warm, fresh-baked smell with him. Closing my eyes, I inhaled and imagined how wonderful it must have been to have that smell in the house all the time.
    But it was Mr. Tarleton’s eyes which really gave away his optiontunistity. His gaze was slightly cloudy as if his eyes were cold windows covered by a film of condensation. No matter how many times you wiped the panes off, the film returned, keeping the coldness in. Today, when I think of Mr. Tarleton, I understand that the film over his eyes were walls separating him from outside intrusions, allowing him a special privacy in which to mull over all possibilities. Mr. Tarleton wasn’t like other parents with their one-word grunts; Mr. Tarleton’s walls gave him the chance he required to think of all the options. That’s why he didn’t get tired. He wasn’t in a constant state of chaos, trying to control a bunch of kids. And even if the Tarletons had had four or five kids, I’m pretty sure things would have been the same.  However, I couldn’t help feeling that the film served some other purpose. Like Mrs. Tarleton’s nervous laugh, the film could be dense, like burnt soot on glass fireplace doors. The way he talked about Helen Keller, tentatively asking Dale what he meant, made me feel that the film protected him from something. In a way, it appeared to hold him back from asking too much.
    That Monday was a holiday, so Mr. Tarleton worked only a half day so he could take Dale and me to the movies. The film we saw would become one of the most influential things in Dale’s life. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
    After the machine spit out the three orange tickets, we walked past the velvet ropes into the main part of the lobby. Mr. Tarleton stopped at the concession stand.
    “May we have three jumbo popcorns, three Cokes and one box of candy each,” he said to the girl wearing the red and white apron and matching hat. “We don’t want to run out in the middle of the movie, right guys?”
    “Right!” Dale and I agreed, loading our hands with the loot.
    We found three seats together, and I sank into one between Dale and his dad. The floor was sticky from spilled soda, and Mr. Tarleton joked that wasting Coke was a sin. As the lights went down and the cartoon started, I plunged my hand into the popcorn box, grabbing a fistful and stuffing it in my mouth so that my cheeks strained. Crunching away happily, I realized I had gone through almost half my box by the time the movie started. After the opening credits and the first two scenes, I’d eaten all but the hard, unpopped kernels. Then I stole a glance at Mr. Tarleton and Dale. To my surprise, I saw that they each had a mountain of popcorn in their boxes. They both ate one piece at a time as they sat mesmerized by the screen. I felt stupid for eating so quickly and wished I could hide the empty box.
    I also wondered what had kept Dale and his father so entranced. Had I missed something while I was stuffing my face? I slowed down to the point where I was crunching one burned kernel at a time, trying to do so as quietly as possible so I wouldn’t give myself away.
    The movie progressed with Charlie finding the fifth golden ticket and the kids lining up outside the chocolate factory as Willy Wonka limped out, got his cane stuck and, after a moment of breath-holding panic, somersaulted to the front gate. As we entered the factory, we got a glimpse of Willy Wonka’s secrets - the wonderful inventions and crazy recipes - and we also saw the greedy children prove themselves, one by one, to be unworthy heirs to Willy Wonka’s empire. None but Charlie cared about anyone else; the four other kids grabbed and ate as much as they could and were each, in turn, condemned for their selfishness.  Dale and his dad watched carefully and ate methodically, crunching their popcorn like guilty verdicts - guillotine blades falling on the necks of the four unacceptable cast members.
    The movie ended and I nonchalantly kicked my candy wrapper under the seats when I noticed Dale and his dad hadn’t even opened their candy bars. On the drive home, they spoke excitedly about the film; it appeared they had memorized every bit.
    “Charlie gave back the gobstopper,” Dale gushed. “So he was the only one who really deserved the chocolate factory.”
    “Right. Everybody else was so greedy. And they were greedy too quickly.”
    “You mean because they didn’t stop to think about what they really could do if they had the whole factory?”
    “Exactly. What did you think of the movie, Kevin?”
    I said I liked it fine and then went back to thinking about Mr. Tarleton. I could see he was a natural optiontunist. I just wondered where he got it from.

____

One day, during a math lesson, Dale raised his hand.
    “Mrs. Philbrain, I found an old math book that used to be my cousin’s. I was reading it the other day and it talked about imaginary numbers.”
    The color drained from Mrs. Philbrain’s face.
    “How can a number be imaginary?” Dale asked.
    Mrs. Philbrain tried to cut him off at the pass.
    “Y-y-you d-d-don’t have t-t-to worry about that now, D-D-Dale.”
    “Why not?”
    “B-b-because you ’re not supposed t-t-to yet.”
    Dale scratched his shock of black hair.
    “Yet?”
    “Th-th-that’s right.”
    “Well...when are we supposed to worry about it?”
    “When you g-g-get to high school.”
    “When I get to high school?”
    “Yes. ”
    “But, Mrs. Philbrain, how will I know them?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “In high school. How will I know when to worry about them if they’re imaginary?”
    Mrs. Philbrain groaned heavily and put her hand across her chest. She opened her purse and found her dark bottle, which she took out and extracted one of the little yellow pills. After she stuck it under her tongue, she took a deep breath and waited a moment.
    “D-d-dale, what are you t-t-talking about?”
    “Well, if they’ re imaginary numbers, how will I recognize them?”
    “Because they ’ll b-b-be in your math b-b-b-ook.”
    “But how will I know which ones they’ll be?”
    “Dale, please!”
    “No, really. I want to know. If there’s such a thing as an imaginary number, I want to know about it.”
    “D-d-dale, do you want t-t-to go to the p-p-princip-p-pal’ s office?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “Then, j-j-just stop this right now. Do you underst-st-stand me?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Philbrain.”
    The teacher popped another pill into her mouth.
    At recess, however, Dale told me he didn’t understand. We were walking through a small thicket which led to the baseball diamond. It had been unseasonably cold and the path we took was littered by colored leaves which had been caught off guard by the surprise attack of an early winter. The cold air weighted down our lungs and we walked slowly.
    “I think it’s some big secret.”
    My words appeared as puffs of steam before my face when I questioned him.
    “What’s a secret?”
    “These imaginary numbers. It ’s a secret they don’t want to tell us.”
    “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “Mrs. Philbrain...and the others.”
    I didn’t ask him who the “others” were; he’d said it like he didn’t exactly know who they were but he was sure they were out there.
    “They’ll probably tell us there are imaginary words, too. ”
    “Why would they do that?”
    Dale stepped on a branch, crunching it under his foot. The sound reminded me of crunching popcorn.
    “Probably for the same reason they have air raid drills but no air raids,” he answered.