WARNING: Ferns should not be used as substitute for dental floss

About a month ago I was hanging out in my room and checking out how many books have accumulated over the years in my closet. This something that should only be done during the summer, once you’ve done other time killing activities like checking your e-mail, swatting fruit fries that have invaded the house thanks to the “2 bunches for 1” banana offer from Aldi’s, and listening to every song on your mp3 player twice. Judging by some of the titles in my collection, I’d say it began somewhere in the mid 90’s and ended about 3 years ago. Still, I have some pretty good books to prop up the overall value. You’ve got classic and underrated Stephen King with It and The Eyes of the Dragon respectively, and Seabiscuit, which was made into a movie known as “Spider Man Rides a Horse”

But the one book that really took me back to my younger days was, Where The Red Fern Grows This story is is line with other young adult animal stories such as Old Yeller, and more recently, Shiloh. In most of these stories, a young boy forms a strong bond with a wild dog that is tested by his family, financial obligations, and some asshole who wants the dog dead. By the time it’s all over the kid has learned about the sanctity of life, and how audiences are suckers for an ending where the dog kicks the bucket.

I had gotten the book the summer before 5th grade and decided to read it for a book report that year. The book reports that year were different from others I’d done up to that point because we didn’t have to get up in front of the class and talk about our book’s main points. No, we had to go sit with the teacher at a table in the back of the room and tell her about our book in quiet hushed tones while she wrote down comments on a notepad. Even in 5th grade I could recognize that the whole thing was just a little too intimate and weird for a classroom setting. It was like being on a job interview that had the feel of a speed dating session—rejection starts with a ring of a bell, kids.

Because my book was one of those good ol’ American dog tales, I thought an A+ was in the bag. It was with this confidence that I breezed through my report, talking about the book’s main conflict, the rising action and the falling action, and was even fielding post report questions from my teacher pretty smoothly, until she threw one at me that wasn’t in the manual:

“Do you believe in the secret of the red fern?”

Secret of the…was I supposed to say yes?—she actually believed that shit?

Like a pro I looked her right in the eye and said, “Yes. Yes I do.”
“I see”, she said, scribbling more notes down.
“Well you may believe in the red fern and all of its mysterious power, but your breath killed it—along with any of the surrounding plant life, plus Billy’s hunting dogs Old Dan and Little Ann. It’s terrible.”

I was taken aback. Was that supposed to be a backhanded compliment? First she tried to impose her belief in the red fern on me, and now–she was calling me a murderer with bad breath. It was too much. I looked around, trying to regain my composure. I blamed the extra bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch I’d had that morning—that stuff could stay on your breath for hours. They never mentioned that on the box.

I wondered what else she’d written down on that notepad of hers. Had she written “future homosexual” by my name because I was wearing a hand me down ribbed purple sweater with a coat of arms under interlocking swords on the breast pocket for the third time that week? (It wasn’t my fault, my mom was too stupid to know that injecting purple into my wardrobe would cause other students to call me gay until the end of sixth grade.)

“Do you have a breath mint, Steven?” she whispered.

“Huh? I’m not gay!”

“I never said…listen Steven—

“I don’t answer to that name any more. Just call me The Great Halitosis Fern”

PS According to this link you can check the vibe your breath is giving off to others by licking your wrist and smelling it. Try not to do this in public; you’ll look like a cat. However, if you must, do it in the privacy of a restroom stall. The process will be complicated by the surrounding smells, but I’m sure your breath will win out.