"But You'll Never Know, Will You?"
“Beat you to the kitchen,” yelled Mart as he and his sister Trixie hopped off the school bus at the end of the long driveway that led to their family farmhouse.
“Will not!” responded Trixie who took off after her brother.
Mart, aged 10 and Trixie, aged 9, pounded their feet hard against the gravel as they raced each other. Despite Trixie’s efforts, Mart arrived at the back door first.
“Told you,” panted Mart, his hat in his hands and his coat partially unzipped.
“Oh yeah?” Trixie grabbed one of Mart’s gloves that was sticking out his pocket and tossed it into the yard.
“Hey!” Mart jumped off the back porch to retrieve the glove while Trixie opened the door and dashed inside.
When Mart came into the kitchen, Trixie crowed triumphantly. “See, I won.”
“Did not.”
“Did too. You said you could beat me to the kitchen. Well, I was here but you were still outside so that means I won.”
Mart scowled. “No. You cheated.”
“Did not.”
“Shhhhh.” Moms hurried into the kitchen, her finger poised against her pursed lips. “Will you two pipe down. Your brother is still asleep.”
“But, Moms…” protested Mart.
“And I’ve already got your snack ready,” continued Moms.
Going over to the stove, Moms produced a plate full of freshly baked peanut butter cookies and two glasses of milk. Upon seeing the tantalizing treat, Mart’s stomach began to rumble loudly. He quickly tore off his coat and flung it toward the rack by the back door. But the coat missed the peg and fell into a heap on the floor. Ignoring it, he ran to the table and sat down.
“Mart,” said Moms sternly. “Go pick up your coat and hang it up correctly then wash up. You know better than to show up at the table with dirty hands.”
Mart slunk out of his chair, put his coat on the peg then waited impatiently behind Trixie while she finished washing her hands in the kitchen sink. He growled when she stopped washing and held out her hands to inspect them. When she started to rewash them. Mart couldn’t help but complain.
“Oh come on, Trixie. Like you’ve ever cared how clean your hands are.”
With a smirk, Trixie glanced over her shoulder at her brother then continued to scrub away at her fingertips.
Finally, Mart got his chance to clean up then the two sat down at the table and dug into their snack. Moms came back into the kitchen to let Mart and Trixie know that the family would be dining out that night and therefore they should finish their homework right away.
“Do we have to?” asked Trixie, her hands firmly wrapped around a cookie out of which she had taken a big bite.
“Yes.” Moms helped both kids get their homework from the backpacks then left to fold some laundry.
With a lot of sighing and grumbling, Trixie smoothed out her math paper and got to work while Mart pulled out his spelling book. The kitchen was quiet except for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the intermittent sound of an eraser rubbing against a piece of paper. When Mart was done with his spelling, he went up to his room, returning with a fat dictionary.
“What’s that for?” asked Trixie.
“More homework,” answered Mart.
As Trixie scribbled in the last answer on her math sheet, she looked over at Mart, who was randomly flipping through his dictionary.
“Moms!” yelled Trixie. “Mart’s not doing his homework.”
“Yes I am,” argued Mart.
When Moms came into the kitchen, Trixie announced she was done with her work.
“Let me see,” demanded Moms.
Trixie handed her the math sheet which Moms glanced at then set it back down on the table.
“Young lady, you need to go through this paper and erase all your incorrect answers then write in the correct ones. Scribbling out an answer doesn’t work. It just makes your paper messy.”
“Oh, Moms, do I have to?” whined Trixie, kicking at the floor beneath her.
“Yes.”
Trixie pointed at Mart. “Well, he’s not even doing his homework. He’s reading his dictionary.”
“I am so doing homework,” argued Mart.
Moms sighed. “Mart?”
“Moms, this is my homework. Wanna hear what’s happening in my class tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow is my teacher’s nineteenth anniversary of being a teacher.” He looked squarely at Trixie. “That means she’s been teaching nineteen years, in case you didn’t know.”
“Duh, Mart. I think I know what an anniversary is.”
“Anyway, everybody is s’posed to bring in nineteen things.”
“What kind of things?” asked Moms.
“Well, I heard some girls saying they were going to bing in 19 leaves. Joe’s going to bring in 19 of his matchbox cars. And somebody else is bringing in 19 pennies.”
Moms nodded her head. “Those are all good ideas. What are you going to bring in?”
Mart beamed. “I’m going to bring in a word that has 19 letters in it.”
“Nineteen letters? Oh, Mart, are you sure? Maybe you should take in 19 Hershey kisses.”
Trixie snorted. “Like they’d ever survive the bus ride to school.”
Mart glared at his sister, then looked up at his mother. “No. A nineteen letter word will be phenomenal. And that’s why I’m reading this dictionary. I’m looking for that special word.”
“Maybe you should just combine some of your spelling words,” suggested Trixie.
Mart rolled his eyes. “Trixie, it has to be a real word, not a made-up one.”
Returning to his task, Mart flipped back and forth through several pages of his dictionary, stopping periodically to count the number of letters in a word. Meanwhile, Trixie tidied up her math homework then quickly wrote out her own spelling words. A short time later, Trixie announced she was through and put her homework back into her backpack while Mart continued to turn page after page of the dictionary.
“Moms, can I go outside and ride my bike?” Trixie asked.
“Okay but don’t get dirty. We’ll be leaving in a little while and I don’t want to have to clean you up.”
“Okay.”
Trixie went out the back door, leaving Mart sitting at the kitchen table, still searching through his dictionary.
When Trixie came in a short time later, she was with Brian, who had ridden home on a later bus. Mart was still at the table, but now Bobby had joined him and was eating his own small snack.
“Are you still looking for your word?” asked Trixie.
Mart nodded.
“Sounds your afternoon has been kinda co...co..counterproductive,” announced Trixie triumphantly.
Brian smiled. “I think you mean ‘unproductive’, Trixie.”
Trixie shrugged. “Maybe.”
Mart scowled then suddenly brightened. He flipped to the front of his dictionary and excitedly studied the words on a page. Suddenly he cried out,” Trixie! You’re a genius!”
“I am?” Trixie looked confused. “Why?”
“You helped me find my 19 lettered word.”
“I did. How?”
“You made me check something out.”
“What?” demanded Trixie.
“Counterproductively.” announced Mart proudly.
“Counterpro...what?”
“Counterproductively,” repeated Mart. “It means,” he leaned over and read from the dictionary: “something that has the opposite effect of what you are hoping for.”
“So.” Trixie put one hand on her hip. “Let me get this straight. You could only find this huge word after I suggested it?”
Mart shook his head. “You didn’t actually suggest the word, Trixie, just something close to it.”
“And that makes me a genius?”
Mart, who was busy double checking his word, groaned. “On that characteristic, I may have spoken too quickly.”
“Huh?” Trixie looked at her brother. “So, are you done with your homework now?”
“Almost. I’ve just to write my word out on a fresh piece of paper.”
Mart leaned over and, using all capital letters, carefully wrote out his word. When he was done, he proudly held it out to Trixie. “What do you think?”
“It looks like a word that has a lot of letters, a word that I helped you discover.”
“Wellllll, not exactly.”
“You said when you heard me use it, that’s when it hit you.”
“Yeaaahh,” said Mart slowly.
“So I was like a ‘tective who solved the case.”
Mart shook his head. “No. You just gave me a clue. I solved the case.”
“No. When I said ‘counterproductive’, it was like a light bulb came on in that dumb brain of yours. So, I solved the case.”
Mart shook his head. “No. You just reminded me of a long word and that’s when I looked it up.”
“Then why did you say I was a genius. Huh? Huh?” Trixie crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot impatiently.
Mart carefully slid his written word into his homework folder then zipped it into his knapsack.
“It doesn’t matter, Trixie. I found a word and my teacher is going to be so impressed. And I know, sooner or later, I would have found it through my own devices. So, there!”
Trixie thought for a moment. “Fine, have it your way, Mart. But I’ll always know that you wouldn’t have found that word without me.”
“Wrongo, Trixie.”
Trixie leaned down and stared into Mart’s blue eyes. “But you’ll never know, will you?”
The worried look in Mart’s eyes gave Trixie her answer.