King Stupid

About a thousand years ago, on the banks of the river Cam, me and my stupid friends decided to paint a tree with toothpaste. I'm not deriding my friends, mind, when I refer to them as stupid. This was the harmless stupidity of youth, not the more enduring sort you see on reality TV. Besides, I was stupid, too. I was King Stupid. Just ask my parents. They'll tell you. "Socar? Oh, yes. Very stupid, indeed. Also, incapable of effective dishonesty. Fatal combination, that. Why, I don't think she managed to get away with anything. Ever! She'd stick detention slips in her coat pockets, and consider them cleverly hidden. And then there was the time she had three weeks' worth of French homework stuffed in her locker--fat lot of good it was doing, in there! Oh, that idiot! Why do you ask?"

It was in my capacity as King Stupid, I suppose, that I suggested the toothpaste lark. I'd always wanted to squeeze out a whole tube of toothy at once, but I'd never quite dared. I really am a terrible liar, and Mother would've had my head if she'd caught me wasting the family paste. (We all used the same tube, back then. Scots in general, and my mother in particular, are more concerned with economy than with hygiene. Not to mention which, Mother thinks germs shrivel up and die the minute a bottle of Vim comes within ninety feet of them. Keeping a spot of Vim in the bogs, according to Mother, completely negates the mankiness of sharing things that have touched the insides of other people's mouths. Which toothpaste has, when you think about it. Toothbrushes are in and out of mouths all day long, and what do people use to scrape the paste off the end of the tube? Their toothbrushes! Faugh.)

At any rate, there we all were, throwing stuff in the river and discussing my latest escapade. I was involved in more escapades than usual, that year, because I'd been handed a free pass. I knew I was off to Canada after the summer. Cambridge, and everyone in it, would be a world away. That meant no more nice lady at Dillon's bookshop, letting me read all I wanted without buying a thing--but it also meant no more Mrs. Cuthill, docking full grades for the use of green ink. No Mrs. Lanham, either, with her sweat-stained shirts, and no Mr. Chappell, with his spitty consonants. No Mr. Matthews, no Mr. Austin, no Mr. Anyone. It didn't matter what I did at school: come September, it would be as if none of it ever happened. I was already registered for my new school. My parents had sent them my transcript at the beginning of the year. I didn't even have to pass my classes, if I didn't feel like it.

"So you--" Christina stared at me, disbelieving "--you handed in a project on...what?"

"Incrasquibbic energy," I grinned. "I made it up. Thirty pages' worth, plus diagrams."

"You're going to get well done."

"I know! Reckon I'll get expelled?"

"You should do a proper one right away. If you hand it in before he has to read thirty pages of...of that, maybe--"

"Sod that! Besides, I already did a proper one. I did one on hydroelectric power. But I'm not passing it in till I've seen his reaction--ha, ha!"

(I wasn't expelled, of course. Nothing bad happened at all. The offending paper was binned (diagrams and all), after a few choice segments had been read to the class, in a tone thick with disdain. It was everything I'd hoped for, really. It was lovely. It made my chest feel all warm and bursty--puffed out with pride, sort of thing.)

"Anyway," I carried on, "I've brought us some toothpaste. I bought it at the SPAR shop this morning. I saved my lunch money all week. Look--six tubes!" I shook them out on the grass, enjoying my friends' obvious puzzlement. "C'mon. Tell me you've never wanted to take one of these and squeeze it dry. Tell me you've never!"

There were various sounds, but none bespoke protest.

"I thought we'd wipe it on that tree, over there, see how much we can cover."

"You're barmy!"

"You're brilliant!"

"I know!"

I unscrewed the cap from the first tube. Ah, but it was a lovely day! I remember everything about it--the scent of the daisies, the sigh of the river, the prickle of the grass on my thighs--but I've quite forgotten the brand of the toothpaste. It was white and minty, but isn't all toothpaste? It felt both cool and burny on the palms of my hands. And when we descended upon the hapless tree, it mixed with the dust and moss and bark-fragments to make a dead-tooth smell. It--it was thicker than we'd expected, and didn't cover the whole tree, or anything like it. We smeared it over as much of the trunk as we could, but it was all spackled in between our fingers, and bits of the tree kept sticking to it, instead of it sticking to the tree. So we tried to wipe it on some lowerclassmen, and then on each other. My jumper was ruined, and summarily flung in the river. A prefect tried to put us on report, but we just rubbed toothpaste on him. I think he enjoyed it. It was the toothpaste equivalent of a Roman orgy.

That is to say, it was rather jolly. We were all late for our next classes, owing to the peculiar properties of dried toothpaste. It dries quickly, see, more quickly than you'd expect, and it goes all this powdery way. It hardens and crickles and fills up the cracks in your skin. It invades your nailbeds and sticks in your hair. Add moss and dirt to the mix, and you've got something with the approximate consistency of cement. Cleaning it off is an all-afternoon job, as it turns out.

The toothpaste was one of my last escapades. The term came to an end, and the carefree summer. The last thing anyone said to me, before we drove out of Cambridge in Grandpa's old beater, was "Don't ever forget the toothy on the tree." And--fancy that!--I didn't.

I didn't. Wonder if they did?