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was ready for her.
    I stood up and sang,
“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez-vous, dormez-vous
…” And I finished the whole song in French.
    Mrs. Pierre was even more wide-eyed than usual. “Bravo! Bravo!” she shouted, and began to clap. “Please,” she beckoned me, “step to the front of the class and take a bow.”
    I did. I bent over and peeked out at the girls’ side. They were smiling and clapping. Then I looked over at the boys’ side. They were clapping as if a gun was held to their heads. Suddenly, I had another insight. Mrs. Pierre was right. Girls are nice and supportive and boys always try to make everyone feel like a jerk. I had always figured that kids who did everything the teacher asked were just brownnosers trying to get a better grade. Now, it seemed that they were not brownnosers, they were smart kids who were trying really hard to learn what the teacher was getting at.
    When I came home from school I found Betsy in the kitchen, working on the crossword puzzle.
    “Did you ever have an insight?” I asked Betsy.
    She looked up at me and frowned. “Give me an example,” she said.
    “Like I used to think brownnosers were jerks but now I understand where they are coming from and I want to be one of them.”
    “Interesting,” she mused. “I think I’m having an
insight
right now.”
    “Really?” I said. “That is so cool. What are you thinking?”
    “That you have bugged me in the past. That you are bugging me now. And you will continue—in your unrelenting way—to bug me for the rest of my life,” she said.
    “That’s too obvious to be an insight,” I said, catching on that she was making fun of me. “You have to try harder.”
    “How’s this,” she said, and held her temples and squinted. “In about thirty seconds you’ll either be out of my sight or dead.”
    “Okay, okay,” I moaned. “I just thought you’d like to know that I’m getting smarter.”
    “I hate to be the one to inform you,” she said. “But you must be the last person on the planet to figure out that if you do what the teacher assigns, and put some effort into the job, you will learn something.”
    “Better late than never,” I sang out.
    “What’s a five-letter word for beat it?” she asked.
    “S-c-r-a-m,” I spelled out as I dashed down the hall.
           The rest of the week I did exactly what Mrs. Pierre expected. For the sense of taste I brought in french fries but I called them
pommes frites.
She loved that. And for the sense of sight I brought in a library book on the French painter Monet. She thought I was wonderful and went on and on about what a genius Monet was and how I had a very refined eye for “art appreciation.” And for the sense of touch I brought in Betsy’s fake ponytail because it was in the shape of a French twist. Mrs. Pierre loved it. She even tried it on for the class.
    At the end of the fifth day, after everyone had finished their show-and-tell for the sense of touch, Mrs. Pierre took her place on the X and gave us the last assignment.
    “Now that we have mastered the senses, I want you to write a story about something memorable. And, I want you to use all of your senses when writing the story, so when I read it I can smell, feel, taste, hear, and touch what you are talking about.”
    Okay, I thought to myself. This is the time for me to really show her what I can do.
    It was a Friday night but I was ready to get to work. I had given some thought to the story I had wanted to write and was eager to get started. It was about something incredible that had happened to me the week before and it involved all my senses. I went into my room, pulled out my diary, and got busy.
    THE UGLY THING

by Jack Henry
    My friend Tack Smith called me up on the telephone. “Come over to my house,” he said all out of breath (SOUND). “I just got back from the doctor’s and have something awesome for you to see (SIGHT).”
    “Okay,” I said, even though I really didn’t