PLEASE RETURN TO: Norbert M. Finkelstein
236
PLEASE RETURN TO: Norbert M. Finkelstein
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Overview
Have you ever wondered, “What in the world is my teacher thinking?” You may not know it, but this very journal you now hold in your hands is the key to answering your question once and for all. As long as you can keep a few secrets.
Mr. Finkelstein is your average middle school English teacher…who just happens to moonlight as a professional wrestler. Norbie would like to keep this little part of his life a secret. He’d much rather endure the daily bullying he takes from students like Jimmy Baker, a world-class bubblegum flinger, and perform as the personal gopher for inept colleagues like Coach Seam and Principal Rubrick. It’s easier that way. Out of the spotlight and under the radar: the story of Norbert’s life.
But when he decides to throw his weight around in the ring so he can afford to send his always-supportive mother on a dream vacation to the Greek Isles, a past life and his squandered talent rise up to haunt him. Between his brutal training sessions with Sensei Clement, and the threats he receives from a shifty fight promoter named Joey Happenstance, Norbert must wrestles his way up the ranks by pinning an entire cast of zany opponents. But it takes a lonely student named Maya and Norbie’s secret crush, the school librarian Ms. Gluten, to help him find his true passion and the courage to face his toughest competition yet.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781947796034 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intense Publications |
| Publication date: | 09/10/2019 |
| Series: | Please Return To: , #1 |
| Pages: | 236 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.54(d) |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Frank is a Philadelphia native who graduated from Albright College with a degree in English, and moved to New York City to become a teaching fellow. He earned an MFA in Fiction from National University while living in a house under the trees with his best friend and muse, their obnoxious alley cat, and two hundred pounds worth of dog. You can find him on Twitter @frankmoewriter or visit his author website at frankmorelliwrites.com.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
IF YOU'RE READING THIS, you can assume a very large man is in a state of panic. There's a good chance this man has scoured the streets of Mapleton in search of his lost journal (promise you won't call it a diary), and now he's terrified someone will rifle through the pages and snoop on all his private thoughts.
Can't you just picture the poor guy? He's wearing his bathrobe and a pair of fluffy slippers covered in grease from stumbling around the streets in the dark. His face is covered in patchy stubble from missing a few days of shaving, and his eyes are droopy and bloodshot from lack of sleep.
Let's go ahead and assume the large man I speak of is Norbert M. Finkelstein, and that the writer of this very journal, which you now hold, happens to go by the same name. And let's assume this Finkelstein character is a private and secretive young man who can't bear the thought of another human being invading his thoughts.
It's not too late for you to do the right thing. Turn back. Respect the man's privacy and return his journal as quick as you can and without turning even one more page (or at the very least, bury it deep in your backyard so no human will ever lay eyes on it again).
Still reading? Now why would you want to go and do something like that? What good does it do you to know a guy's personal secrets — things he wouldn't tell his own mother? How does it help you to see through the eyes of some out of touch adult like a Norbert M. Finkelstein? I mean, other than learning a guy's true feelings (I mean his deep-down and not-quite-polite feelings) about some of the most powerful and important people in all of Mapleton — or at least at Mapleton Middle School.
I see you're not turning back. You're doing quite the opposite. But I guess I can't hold it against you. Come to think of it, if I found an old journal lying in the street just begging to be read, I'd probably do the same thing as you. Curiosity is a worthy opponent. Just keep in mind, I never wrote in a journal before so don't hold it against me if I wind up doing a bunch of complaining. Who knows? I may never make it past this first entry, because it's not as if writing in a stupid notebook will solve any of my problems. Just consider yourself warned if you happened to find this treasure chest of my thoughts, and you think you're cute for reading even one more crumby word of this stuff.
Creep.
CHAPTER 2SUNDAY, SEPTEMBZR 30
OKAY, I'VE HAD A FEW days to think and maybe writing in this journal thing isn't the worst idea in the world. Maybe it'll help me sort out some issues in my life. Maybe I'll write pages and pages of long-winded prose that will reveal the answers to all of life's mysteries. Or maybe, at the very least, it'll ease the pain of an oncoming Monday this one time. You know, it's kind of funny how my favorite day of the week is followed right behind by my least favorite day. I guess it's the way things worked out when the first cave man chiseled all the days of the week on his cave wall and labeled two of them 'the weekend'.
And, no matter how much I enjoy Saturday (I could wake up in a bed made of solid gold coins, eat breakfast with the Queen of England, foster world peace by noon, and win the World Series with one swing of the bat by nightfall), Sunday just isn't that sunny to me. Sure, I get to lay around on the couch, munch cheddar crisps and submarine sandwiches, and wash them down with gulps of Fizzy Fountain Cola.
Sure, I can sit and watch grown men behind helmets and visors crash into each other at alarming speeds (hey, I don't love violence; just football). And sure, there's not a single whining kid sitting near me to ruin any of it.
Then why doesn't Sunday sparkle as brightly as your average (see: glorious) Saturday afternoon?
I'll try to give you the short version because, as you'll probably see while you're busy stealing my thoughts, I'm much better at telling my stories in goofy, little sketches than I am at telling them in words. Anyway, it's all because of them. My kids. Well, not my kids in the whole 'parent' sense of the word, because I'm not a father or anything. I mean "my kids" — as in my students.
See, I teach Literature (well, I try) to a bunch of ungrateful sixth graders at Mapleton Middle School. I've been in a classroom for a few years now, but the group I have this year is by far the worst case I've ever seen. I'm not talking about smarts, because enough brain waves bounce around that classroom each day to jam the sonar down at Mapleton Airport. The problem is, they're the type of smarts that always seems to be pointed in the wrong direction — many times as cross-hairs planted right between my eyes.
It's why I sit around on Sundays worrying about what will become of me on Monday. Will Jimmy Baker sling-shot a snowball-sized spit ball against the board while I'm writing notes? Will Mandy Mallomar spend half the class batting her eyelashes at Dino Fellini, and the other half circulating a crude sketch through the classroom that has me shoveling baked beans into my mouth from a large bucket as strange lines of smoke escape from my, well — oh, never mind. You get the picture. And if you don't, it looked kind of like this:
Just think: as soon as I turn off this night light and close my eyelids, that's the kind of awful, no-good, terrible stuff I have waiting for me in the morning.
CHAPTER 3MONDAY. OCTOBER 1
TODAY WAS TERRIBLE THOM the moment I stepped out of bed. Of course, that first step happened almost an hour after it should have because my alarm never went off. I can thank Little Tom Sawyer for such a thoughtful gift.
Sawyer's my cat. He has brown, shaggy fur and big, green alien eyes that glow even when it's not dark. I can never be mad at the guy because he's misunderstood, just like the boy in Mark Twain's classic tale. Sawyer, my cat (but also the boy), always finds himself in the sort of trouble he was never looking for in the first place. For one, my cat (not the boy) can't seem to keep his bushy tail from swishing across the switches on my alarm clock.
Of course, when I finally did open my eyes and take my first step from bed, a stumpy tail thrashed around under my foot like a fuzzy snake. Faulkner's frantic yelping confirmed my mistake and probably woke up most of the neighborhood. Faulkner is my yellow lab. I named him Faulkner because, as you can see, he moves kinda slow. Trust me, it's a good name but you probably won't appreciate it until you're much older and you're reading classic literature on your own.
Despite the pet-related delays, I somehow managed to make it to school before my first period class set fire to the building. But I really should have taken more time getting dressed, because my shirt had a wavy, brown coffee stain on the chest pocket and there was a shiny, brown loafer on my left foot and a tennis shoe on the right. And I don't know how I did it, but I grabbed a tie my mother used to make me wear to synagogue every week. Synagogue is the equivalent of church for people of the Jewish faith. People meet there on the holy day, which is Saturday instead of Sunday, and they listen to a rabbi — kind of like a priest — recount stories from the Torah, which is written in Hebrew and shares stories and religious teachings in very much same way the Bible does.
It's kind of cool how Judaism and Christianity hold so many striking similarities to one another. Like, people from both religions realized what kinds of things a person should do to be considered a good person and wrote them all down in a book, so we can have a world full of civilized beings instead of a bunch of booger- flinging morons roaming around. I guess if I really think about it, most religions have more things in common than they have in contrast. I guess most people do, too.
I don't attend synagogue as much as Mom would like me to, but that doesn't mean I'm not Jewish anymore or anything, no matter how many times Mom grumbles at me and says stuff like, "Norbie, I didn't raise you to be a heathen. Promise me you'll get your butt to synagogue next week, will ya? Ya hear me, Norbie?" Or, no matter how many times I say to her, "Of course, Ma, I'll go next week," only to sleep until two in the afternoon and spend the rest of the day munching cheese crisps.
Anyway, the ugly strip of silk with maroon and blue stripes Mom used to make me wear to temple was a bow-tie and, yes, it did make me look like I'd tumbled out of one of those overstuffed clown cars, just like in the sketch I confiscated from Mandy Mallomar before second period. In fact, the rest of my Monday pretty much consisted of tearing up different versions of the same insulting sketch as they were passed through the halls of Mapleton Middle School.
Looks like I'm in for another great week.
CHAPTER 4WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3
I COULDN'T WRITE YESTERDAY because I'm saving up to send my mom on a cruise to the Greek Islands. It's where the Ancient Greeks lived, you know. They ran quite a civilization back in their time. I don't know if you've heard of them. When I was a kid, Mom used to read to me about the Greek heroes, like Perseus and how he chopped off Medusa's head and presented it to the goddess Athena. Man, I loved those stories.
As far as I could tell, Mom enjoyed telling me the stories, too. She'd say, "Norbie, sit down here on the edge of the bed, will ya?" And then she'd stumble off into great, epic tales of Odysseus and his travels back to Ithaca from the Trojan Wars, or about Zeus and how he tricked his own father into taking over his reign on Mt. Olympus. I'd be totally captivated by how she'd not only tell the tales, but how she'd also act out parts of them and take on the roles of beasts like the thousand- handed ones or the terrifying, one-eyed cyclops.
Probably her favorite tale to tell focused on the island of Santorini, where the great volcanic beast, Palea Kameni, once erupted so violently it created a legend about a lost city — Atlantis — that slid off into the ocean and became an underwater epicenter for the gods. Of course, the mythical city has never been found and probably doesn't exist, but that never stopped Mom from saying things like, "One day, you and me will travel to Atlantis, Norbie, and we'll swim through the blue deep to the market for some underwater cheese snacks." Then she'd laugh because she knew it was a vacation we'd never be taking anywhere other than in our own imaginations. But I never gave up hope. It might sound stupid, but I always figured I'd find a way to make it happen, at least for Mom's sake. Even if she'll just be able to see the parts of Greece that actually exist.
Of course, the stories weren't the only things that held my attention. Mom's chocolate chip cookies weren't too bad at keeping my butt in the chair, nor were her chocolate peanut butter brownies, or her spicy sausage lasagna. Come to think of it, I ate a lot back then. Still do. I guess Mom was on to something when she'd tell me,
"Norbie, you're always gonna be my growing boy, so eat like you mean it!" Mom always had a way of putting a positive spin on things. That's one of the many reasons I love her more than anything in my life.
It's also why I went down to the travel agency after school today to see if I could schedule her trip so it fell on the week after Hanukkah. The problem was I found out at warp speed that cruises to the Greek Islands cannot be sold to middle school Literature teachers. If a mere teacher could, in fact, afford a cruise to Greece, then I wouldn't need to work for seventy-seven consecutive years just to pay for one. To put it in perspective, that's almost 14,000 full school days, and it means hearing that stupid bell shout its annoying pRRRING!' over 100,000 times between classes ... and maybe more if you count what I had to do next.
But, I mean, if anyone deserves a cruise to the Greek Islands, it's Mom. I can't let her down, which is why I'm working a second job. It's only a few nights a week, and there's definitely an annoying bell involved, but if it'll get Mom one step closer to the Acropolis and the mystical island of Santorini then I guess I'm going to have to endure all the ringing in my ears.
CHAPTER 5THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4
(59 DAYS UNTIL HANUKKAN)
ONE OF MY TAVORTL books is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. If you've never heard of it, you need to get out from behind the television set for a few minutes before your brain turns to fruitcake. I love the book because, in it, the young Jim Hawkins leaves his safe life as an innkeeper to sail the high seas with swashbucklers and pirates. He becomes a bit of a pirate himself, if you must know. I guess it would be pretty hard not to when you're searching for treasure with the infamous Long John Silver. That's the dread pirate Long John Silver, not to be confused with the fast food chain or any of its greasy, overcooked fish- stick inspired meals.
You know, I love teaching Treasure Island. Every year, I try to plan lessons for my students to help them understand the exciting life of a pirate. Today, I was sure I'd come up with the best lesson yet. I was convinced my class would love it. Here's what I planned to do:
1. All students are put in groups of three or four and have to create a name for their ship and an objective for their mission. What do they plan to steal?
2. All students need to give themselves a pirate nickname and create their own personal legend. In other words, how did you become a pirate?
3. Each ship will present its story to the rest of the class with all members acting as their pirate characters.
Blame me for thinking the whole thing sounded like harmless fun. I mean, what's better than pretending you're part of a band of bloodthirsty villains robbing your way across open water? I could only wish my teachers had taken the time to be so creative back when I was in school. Most of the time they were too busy listening to their own voices and making us take notes until our fingers bled. Who knows? Maybe I should have followed their examples after all, because this is how things went down in reality:
1. All the students were put into groups of three or four except Jimmy Baker, who taped a paper eye patch over both eyes and claimed to be the blind pirate Mangy Dog. He told me he's running his own ship with a ghost crew made entirely of swords and bones.
2. Not to be outdone, Derek Meeks decided he would run his own ghost ship as well and then suddenly the class started falling into line like a row of dominoes. Next thing I knew, there were 22 one-manned ghost ships sailing the black waters of my classroom.
3. Before I could sort it all out, Derek shouted, "Mutiny!" as if he knew the meaning of the word and he jumped down on Mandy Mallomar to hold her at sword point, which in this case was the tip of a number two pencil. "I take ye prisoner!" he shouted. And suddenly it was every boy and girl for themselves. Pencils cracked against skulls and erasers boomed across the room like cannonballs. Jillian Buzzbee's face contorted into a sharp scowl when she was tied to her desk chair with Jimmy Baker's belt. Bodies of the unlucky were flung about the classroom and behind my desk, which transformed into a dry version of Davy Jones's locker. And just at that moment, who do you think walked through the door and took an eraser-cannonball to the forehead? You guessed it. Principal Rubrick. And he didn't look happy. Let's just say we won't be playing pirate again for a while.
In other news, I'm headed off to my new job. If I'm lucky, I'll come back in one piece.
CHAPTER 6FRIDAY, OCTOBZR 5 (58 DAYS UNTIL HANUKKAH)
IT'S AMAZING HOW I could be invisible to the world one day and a school-wide celebrity the next. And all it took was coming to work with a black eye. That's right, a big, fat shiner. I tried to keep it secret by wearing a giant pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses, but all that earned me was a wise-alecky announcement from Jimmy Baker as the late bell rang. "Hey look!" he said. "Our substitute teacher is Elvis!"
He wasn't offby much, I guess — except maybe a hundred pounds. The comment kind of threw the whole class into a feeding frenzy and I was the bait.
"Sing for us, Mr. Finkelstein, er, I mean Elvis," said Mandy Mallomar. That's about the time I removed my sunglasses to reveal the purples, greens, and yellows of a deep bruise. It's also when things got sort of interesting. The questions blasted out at me from all angles like bullets from a machine gun.
"Wow! What happened to you?"
"Nothing."
"Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore."
Are you wearing makeup?"
"No."
"Did you get in a fight?"
"Definitely not." (Although this was only partly true.)
The truth was, I had a little accident at my new job last night. It was nothing major. Nothing I really want to talk about. My students didn't understand my desire for privacy. They seemed to think the black eye was like wearing a badge that said, "I'm daring and important!" Trust me, there's no badge. It's just swollen and blurry and annoying.
Coach Seam, however, would tell you he disagrees. Coach Sean Seam is the athletic director at Mapleton Middle. He also teaches a sixth-grade gym class, which means he spends at least half his day reading the sports pages while the over-eager students in his classes bounce dodge balls off the foreheads of the unsuspecting (and often un-athletic). Coach Seam also used to coach the wrestling team. I say 'used to' because he somehow managed to pawn that duty off on me. He was always doing that sort of thing. In fact, it seemed like Coach Seam was best at doing anything in his power to make sure he didn't actually do anything.
"You get in a fight with Rocky this morning, Norbie?"
"No," I told him.
"Boy, I'd hate to see the other guy."
"There was no fight, Sean."
"Ok. Whatever you say there, Tiny." That's another thing. He was always calling me 'Tiny' even though I weigh close to three hundred pounds, and the joke never gets old to him. Every time he says it to me, he starts snorting and squealing and falling all over himself like he's some world-famous comedian. He sounds a whole lot more like a greased pig to me — and not the one you see on Saturday morning cartoons, either, because that pig's actually funny.
"Listen, Tiny," he said to me today. "You think maybe we can win a few matches this year for a change?" I didn't answer because it would have been pointless to tell him our team was a complete joke. I mean, our biggest wrestler weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet and our smallest, Randy Welch, a scrawny sixty-seven. Randy's best chance last year was to bite the ankles of his opponents, a move that would get you disqualified in any sport not offi dated by a blood-thirsty mosquito.
Looks like I have my work cut out for me this year.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Please Return To: Norbert M. Finkelstein"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Frank Morelli.
Excerpted by permission of INtense Publications LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Friday, September 28,
Chapter 2 - Sunday, September 30,
Chapter 3 - Monday, October 1,
Chapter 4 - Wednesday, October 3,
Chapter 5 - Thursday, October 4,
Chapter 6 - Friday, October 5,
Chapter 7 - Monday, October 8,
Chapter 8 - Tuesday, October 9,
Chapter 9 - Thursday, October 11,
Chapter 10 - Friday, October 12,
Chapter 11 - Monday, October 15,
Chapter 12 - Wednesday, October 17,
Chapter 13 - Thursday, October 18,
Chapter 14 - Sunday, October 21,
Chapter 15 - Monday, October 22,
Chapter 16 - Friday, October 26,
Chapter 17 - Monday, October 29,
Chapter 18 - Monday, November 5,
Chapter 19 - Tuesday, November 6,
Chapter 20 - Wednesday, November 7,
Chapter 21 - Saturday, November 10,
Chapter 22 - Monday, November 12,
Chapter 23 - Wednesday, November 14,
Chapter 24 - Friday, November 16,
Chapter 25 - Saturday, November 17,
Chapter 26 - Monday, November 19,
Chapter 27 - Wednesday, November 27,
Chapter 28 - Friday, November 23,
Chapter 29 - Saturday, November 24,
Chapter 30 - Sunday, November 25,
Chapter 31 - Monday, November 26,
Chapter 32 - Wednesday, November 28,
Chapter 33 - Friday, November 30,
Chapter 34 - Saturday, December 1,
Chapter 35 - Monday, December 3,
Acknowledgments,
Connect with Frank Morelli,
Exclusive extract from the sequel,