“Origami Yoda, how are we supposed to sell all that popcorn?” I asked Dwight, who was pushing a roll around in a pool of gravy with one hand and holding up Origami Yoda with the other.
“But we have to sell it,” I told Origami Yoda. “Apparently, that’s the only way we’re going to get to take our robot to the FLLs.”
“Yeah,” said Kellen. “Ms. Richards told us the same thing in art class. We need to sell the junk to pay for art supplies.”
Then Kellen and Tommy started yelling at Harvey. They’re all fighting all the time these days.
But I started thinking … maybe Origami Yoda was actually telling us something useful. I mean, he always does.
“Good grief,” said Harvey, and started to pull Darth Paper out of his bag. I went off to see if there was a seat at Murky’s table. I just can’t stand listening to Harvey anymore.
After school, I went back to see Mr. Randall before my bus came.
“If I sell a ten-dollar mini-can of popcorn, how much money actually goes into the fund?”
“Well, not ten dollars—I know that,” said Mr. Randall. “There’s the cost of the popcorn and the can …”
“And the ugly painting on the can,” I added. “And they have to pay Mr. Good Clean Fun.”
“And his monkey,” said Mr. Randall with a funny smile. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve heard that the school only keeps half the money. But don’t quote me on that.”
“So, say I talk my grandmother into supporting the school by buying an outrageously overpriced mini-tin of popcorn she doesn’t even want. What does the school get? Five bucks?”
“I guess so.”
“What if I just sold her nothing for five dollars?”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah, it would be cheaper than the ten dollars and it wouldn’t clutter up her house and it wouldn’t be ugly, but I would get the same amount of money for the school.”
Mr. Randall smiled.
“Quavondo, that’s not a bad idea at all.”
“Thanks, but it wasn’t mine. It was Origami Yoda’s.”
What really surprised me was how many people bought more than one nothing.
My grandmother, for example, bought five. That’s $25 worth of nothing.
“Q, I’ve got twelve grandkids—you’re my favorite, of course—and each year each one of them calls me up to buy some kind of *$^# in a collectible can. Who collects &*%##$ cans? But I always buy, even though I know that most of that money is just going to go right back to the idiots that made the &@^$ can in the first place. So, thank you for not making me buy a can.”
Then she put my granddad on the phone, and he liked the idea so much he gave me $25 too. That’s $50 from one phone call. There’s no way they would have bought $50 worth of popcorn, and even if they had, that would have only been $25 for the school.
When I told my neighbors and my mom’s friends that they could either buy a $10 can or just give the school $5, they all gave me at least $5. And nobody even looked at the popcorn catalog. Plus they all laughed about it, instead of grumbling about it like they did last year.
Grand total: $135. I would have had to sell $270 worth of popcorn to get that much, and I never would have been able to sell all that. Plus, if I had, I would have had to deliver it. And then everybody who actually ate it would have blamed me for getting ripped off.
I told the other kids what I was doing, and some of them tried it too. Everybody in LEGO class did, and we made a lot of money. I thought we should just keep it all for going to the competition, but Mr. Randall said we should put it in the electives fund for everybody.
Of course, when Mr. Good Clean Fun came back and handed out prizes, we didn’t get anything because we hadn’t sold any Edu-Fun products. But when we got to Mr. Randall’s class later, he had ordered pizzas for us with his own money.
So, we actually got something for nothing!
Harvey’s Comment
OK, let’s not confuse the issue. Yes, the popcorn cans were stupid. Yes, it was a great idea to sell “nothing” instead. But was that idea really Paperwad Yoda’s? I think not. Paperwad Yoda was just babbling. It was Quavondo’s idea. That’s a classic tactic of fake psychics: Throw out something vague and let the sucker think it meant something.
Tommy’s Comment: ARRRGH! I can’t stand the way Harvey twists everything around!
Harvey is still hung up on whether Origami Yoda is a hoax. The important thing now is to show that he is a benefit to the school. In this story, he got a bunch of kids who didn’t want to sell anything to sell nothing, and we made a lot more money than we would have. The school board should be giving him a reward. Period.
He deserves a reward for this next story too …
ORIGAMI YODA AND THE BODY ODOR IN WONDERLAND
BY CASSIE
Dear School Board,
You want to hear about something great Dwight and Origami Yoda have done?
Well, we had this situation in the drama club that was getting totally ugly, and it was about to get way uglier.
See, we were doing Alice in Wonderland: The Musical, and there are a lot of parts, so some people who hadn’t been in plays before ended up getting roles. I was the White Rabbit, by the way.
So the play was going fine and all, but the problem was Lisa, who was the Cheshire Cat. She had never been in drama club before and none of us knew her real well.
At first we didn’t really realize who it was that smelled so bad. But pretty soon we realized it was Lisa. I mean, she smelled terrible.
And the thing is, we spend a lot of time very close to each other. There’s no real backstage, you know, just this closet-size area on each side of the stage. And sometimes we all have to stand back there waiting for our cues, like right before the big song, “Tea Party Boogie.”
And then there are times when we all sit in a circle to read through the script or whatever. And there’s no way you can concentrate on remembering the words when your nose is on fire from a terrible smell.
Everybody was always trying to sit away from her, and it was getting REAL obvious.
My friend Amy, who was Tweedledum, and I whispered to each other about it. But some of the other girls started saying stuff that I was afraid Lisa would overhear. And Haley, who was Alice, actually talked to our drama club teacher, Mrs. Hardaway, but she said we needed to accept people’s differences.
Well, I was willing to try, but some of the others weren’t. Then Lisa was absent one day, and that’s when things got really nasty.
Brianna goes, “OMG, it is so nice to have some fresh air.”
And Haley goes, “I know. We won’t have to hold our breath through the whole ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’ dance for once.”
“What I don’t understand,” goes Gemini, the Red Queen, “is how she can possibly smell so bad. I mean, my brother goes a week without taking a bath and he doesn’t smell THAT bad.”
And then people started describing what she smelled like, and it got really, really nasty.
Harvey, who plays the King, is, like, the world’s worst actor, by the way, but since there are only two boys in drama club, he always gets a part. Mike is the other boy. He’s the Mad Hatter. He’s not a great actor either, but at least he’s nice.
“Now you’re just being mean,” said Amy.
“You know what I think is mean?” goes Haley. “I think it’s mean of her to stink up our play. If she wants to be a pig, she should do it somewhere else.”
Mike stomped off. I wish I had stomped off too, but I was sort of stuck there like a zombie. I mean, honestly, the smell bothered me a lot. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I did want to find a way to change the situation.
“I can’t believe we’ve got three more weeks of rehearsals to go,” said Brianna.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Haley. “Hardaway won’t do anything, so if WE don’t do something, we’re going to have to smell her for three weeks. No way.”
“What can we do? Att
ack her with Febreze?” said Gemini.
This time Haley and Brianna laughed, but I don’t think they even knew where the quote came from.
“Shut up, Harvey,” I said. “Mike’s right. You guys are being too mean! What if one of us just talked to her nicely?”
“I’m not doing it,” said Haley. “I don’t want to get that close to her.”
“Would you stop it?” said Amy. “If we do anything, we need to do it super-nice. We have to be totally careful about what we say.”
“Fine,” said Haley. “You guys go tell her something nice, but if you don’t get her to either hose down or drop out, then I’m getting out the Febreze.”
Mrs. Hardaway called us to rehearse “This Is My Wonderland,” which neither me or Amy are in. So we talked about it. Neither of us wanted to say anything to Lisa, but we knew one of us had to, or Haley would do it for us.
After rehearsal, we asked Mike if he would do it.
“What would I say to her?” he asked. “I would have no idea what to say.”
Then he got his big idea.
“Why not get Origami Yoda to tell her? He always knows what to say.”
“Yeah, right,” Harvey said. “I’m sure she’ll take it better if it comes from a total weirdo with a green finger puppet.”
“Nobody asked you, Harvey,” I said. “Besides, unlike your obnoxious puppet, Origami Yoda does know what he’s doing. He saved my butt big-time last year!”
“Mine too,” said Mike.
“Yeah, I know all about your pathetic problems,” said Harvey. “Let me know when you’re ready for Vader to help.”
“Yeah, right.”
I ride the bus with Dwight, but I wanted to keep this conversation private. I asked him if Amy and I could talk to him and Origami Yoda the next day before school. He said, “Indubitably.” I guessed that meant yes.
The next day, we found him in the library, on the floor in front of the encyclopedias, pounding on a tube of ChapStick with the A–Argentina volume.
he said in his ridiculous Yoda voice. Suddenly, asking him for advice seemed 100 percent ridiculous. If he hadn’t helped me so much last year, I wouldn’t have bothered.
“Do you know that girl Lisa?” Amy asked. “She’s in our play and she stinks.”
“So do most of the actors in the drama club,” said Dwight in his regular voice.
“No, not like that,” I said. “She means that Lisa smells bad.”
“Yeah, she sort of is,” said Amy. “That’s why we want you—or actually Origami Yoda—to talk to Lisa before Haley does.”
“OK,” Dwight said, and he got up and left before we realized he was going. He walked straight out of the library. About ten minutes later he walked back in.
“Did you go see Lisa?”
“Yes.”
“What did Origami Yoda tell her?”
“He didn’t tell her anything.”
“Why not?”
“He just wanted to see her hair.”
“Her hair? Isn’t it just normal hair?”
“I thought so,” said Dwight.
“Well, when is he going to talk to her?”
“I don’t know,” said Dwight. “First he wants to investigate.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Are you going to do that Sherlock Holmes accent again?”
“Yes, I am,” said Dwight in his Sherlock Holmes accent.
“What are you going to investigate?” Amy asked.
“Yoda hasn’t told me yet.”
“Forget it,” I said. “This is getting stupid. Are you going to help or not? Because if you’re just going to make funny voices and fool around, we need to know now so we can do something else.”
Then he started banging on the ChapStick with the A–Argentina volume again.
That afternoon we had play practice again. And Lisa was there, and so was the smell. Haley was furious.
The next morning we found Dwight in the library again. This time he was happy to see us.
“Look at this!” he shouted. He held up the ChapStick tube. It looked like he had yanked it apart and almost gotten it back together again. The thing you turn was sticking way out of it on a little stick.
He put his thumb on the turny thing and pushed it sort of like a syringe. The cap popped off the ChapStick and hit Amy in the eye.
“Wow, it works a lot better than I thought,” said Dwight.
“Terrific,” Amy said, feeling her eye socket for damage.
“Listen, Dwight,” I said. “Did you do whatever it was Origami Yoda wanted?”
“Yes. I went last night on my bike,” he said, using his Sherlock Holmes accent again. As if Sherlock Holmes used to ride down Route 24 on a bike.
“Where did you go?”
“To Ryland Estates.”
“Isn’t that the trailer park behind where Walmart used to be?”
“Yes.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “That’s where Lisa lives?”
“Elementary, my d—”
I cut him off. “So you went to her house?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“The Ryland Estates laundry building.”
“And?”
“They don’t have one.”
“So?”
“Watch this,” said Dwight, and he held up the ChapStick again.
I grabbed it out of his hand.
“Would you stop being a dipwad and tell us what’s going on?”
“OK,” said Dwight. And all of a sudden, he was completely normal. Like a totally different person. It was kind of scary.
“Don’t you see,” he said, without any fake British accent. “Lisa’s not dirty. Her hair is perfectly clean. It’s her clothes that are dirty. She doesn’t have a washer and dryer in her house. So they have to drive somewhere to do their laundry at a Laundromat, and for whatever reason her parents don’t have the time or the money to do that right now. That part’s none of our business, really, but I’m sure there’s no happy reason for it.”
“Jeez,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about why someone might smell bad.
“What are we going to do about all that?” said Amy. “It’s still going to hurt her feelings whether we tell her that she stinks or that her clothes stink.”
“Why don’t you ask Origami Yoda?” said Dwight.
“Again? Are you kidding? He hasn’t gotten us anywhere,” I said.
For three weeks, we each got into our costumes every day after school, and every single one of us smelled the same—like costumes that had been in an old, slightly damp cardboard box for a couple of years.
But the important thing is that nobody ever said anything to Lisa, and her feelings never got hurt. And the play was great!
And I think that’s proof that even though Dwight is a little weird, he is a good guy to have at Ralph McQuarrie Middle.
Harvey’s Comment
This was Yoda’s worst solution of all time! Do you know how hot that King costume was? Every day after school for three weeks I had to wear that thing and march around.
Also, I can see that this case file is really all about making me seem like a villain. OK, fine, I’m the bad guy because I made a couple of jokes privately, without Lisa even hearing them.
I guess nobody thinks Dwight might be a bad guy for ALMOST SHOOTING A GIRL’S EYE OUT!!!
My Comment: Yeah, I think the ChapStick Rocket ended up on Rabbski’s list of “unacceptable behaviors.” I’m pretty sure Dwight ended up in ISS for it.
But this story shows that when something important is on the line, Dwight is actually a lot more kind and considerate than some of the “normal” kids at school.
ORIGAMI YODA AND THE PRE-EATEN WIENER
BY MIKE
Dear School Board,
Having had some time to reflect on the incident with the pre-eaten wiener, I have come to the conclusion that Dwight/Yoda are the good guys while the rest of the kids around here are a pack of wild savages who woul
d think it was really funny if I ended up puking from food poisoning or getting a tapeworm or worse!
What happened was, one day at lunch I got a hot dog that had a bite out of it already. Or at least it looked like it did. Maybe it was just a mutant hot dog. Either way, it’s proof that this school system does not take food quality seriously.
Note: In no way do I blame our lunch ladies or Lunch Man Jeff. There is no way they would have served this freaky wiener if they had seen it first. They can only serve what you, the school board, buy. And you guys buy junk.
Anyway, I got the wiener. It was repulsive.
“I’ll give you a dollar if you eat it,” said Tommy.
You can already see the crass, careless attitude of my fellow students. Probably they have watched so many reality TV shows that they think people will do anything for money.
“Yeah, I’ll give you a dollar too,” said Kellen.
Well, two dollars was enough to make me think about it. Maybe it had just been caught in a machine at the hot dog plant. Maybe it hadn’t really been eaten by somebody. But then I thought that maybe the “somebody” was a “something.” Yuck.
“Eat it! Eat it!” Tommy and Kellen started chanting, and it took two seconds for the rest of the table to start too. And then everybody was looking at us. And Kellen was holding up the wiener for people to see.
Principal Rabbski started walking toward us from the other end of the cafeteria.
“Here comes Rabbski! Better do it fast!” said Tommy.
Principal Rabbski showed up and started fussing at Dwight.
“Every time there’s a problem, I find you right in the middle of it. I’ve just about had it. Oh, and, of course, you’ve got that puppet. For the millionth time, would you put that thing away! Now, will you please tell me what is going on here?”