The Miracle

Her mouth twisted to the right, and her lips pursed when she spoke. "Missus DECORDAAAYYY," she had told Bryan Frenchie and the other students that first day of class, her Humpty-Dumpty head bobbling gently up and down as if attached to her body with a spring. Mrs. Décorder had short flaming-red hair and wore Revlon's Candy Apple Red lipstick that smudged on her teeth. It always looked to Bryan like she'd taken a bite out of someone's arm or something.

When she spoke, it sounded like she was working half an apple slice around in her mouth. Vowels pooled on the back of her tongue and became three syllables long, consonants got caught between her teeth and lips. It's not that the kids couldn't understand what she said. They just couldn't understand why she spoke that way. They all persisted in calling her Mrs. DEE-CORD-ERR.

Bryan and his best friend Ryan had been friends since kindergarten. There were plenty of ways to tell them apart. Bryan had short, wavy brown hair that arched heart-shaped over his eyebrows and rose a couple inches above his head. A nose, a bit large, sat squarely in the middle of his handsome suntanned face, and big, brown doe eyes belied hints of him being a goof-off. Ryan stood about the same height as his partner in crime, but appeared a good inch or so shorter due to his stick-straight, dark-brown hair that stuck flat against his head. His bangs lie plastered unevenly like piano keys across his creamy brow, perhaps a promise of the talented piano player he would one day become.

Nope, they looked nothing like one another, but just as some kids mix up words like "principal" and "principle," poor Mrs. Décorder, who taught all the fifth-grade science classes, just couldn't keep Bryan and Ryan straight. She'd call Bryan, Ryan, and Ryan, Bryan. It became amusing for them to mix her up, and they'd confuse Mrs. Décorder with an endless loop of her calling Bryan by his correct name and Bryan telling her, "No, Mrs. Deecorderr, I'm Ryan," and Ryan telling her, "No, Mrs. Deecorderr, I'm Bryan," until finally, she became so befuddled she just bunched their names together as one. "Ryanandbryan, are you paying attention?" she'd ask. Or, "Ryanandbryan, please hand in your homework from last night."

Today, Ryanandbryan and the rest of the class prepared to watch a movie all about babies, called "The Miracle of Birth." They had been talking all week about the birds and the bees in their PE class. Bryan and his friend Ryan didn't really understand why something as ticklish as this topic would be left to those whose job it was to check out yard equipment and blow loud whistles. Be that as it may, they couldn't very well watch a movie out on the track field, so the administration asked Mrs. DECORDAAAYYY to show it in science.

Tech-savvy would not be counted among Mrs. Décorder's many attributes. To help her, she had created a list on the board of what she called "Tech-No-Helpers." Ryanandbryan found it comical that she spelled it that way and felt it left their level of assistance open to interpretation. Each week, it would be one student's turn to set up the SMART Board, get the laptops working, or turn off the lights — "Thomas Edison being one of our earliest tech-no innovators," she'd thrum. "Ryanandbryan" topped the list this week, and since Ryan had already had his turn, Bryan's arrived today.

"Ryanandbryan, can you please turn off the lights and get our film going?" Mrs. Décorder's voice sounded a hundred years old to them, though the difference between fifty-five and one hundred was pretty incidental.

Mrs. Décorder always, without fail, had on a white blouse, and she usually wore long, brightly colored slacks. Today she had chosen forest green, which accentuated her long legs. Bryan thought she looked like one of those inflatable moving advertisements made from long green and white fabric tubes as she flailed her arms around, gesturing above at the lights.

He got up from his seat, turned off the light, and set up the "film".(Mrs. Décorder always used such old school terminology).

He couldn't explain the source of his inspiration when Dewey Fairchild later asked, only that it seemed too good an idea not to do. It was the miracle of a baby being born. And Bryan played it — backwards.

Mrs. Décorder sat at her desk grading papers while the students watched aghast as the baby made its magical journey — that's right — into its mother instead of out! Their stunned silence quickly moved into laughter. Wes laughed so hard that he fell to the floor clutching his sides, and Ynez had tears streaming down her cheeks. If each kid had a control button, it was at full volume. The room sounded like the complete explosion of sound that only the many voices together can create.

"Ryanandbryan! Now, stop that! No, no. Now, I'll have to get you in trouble for that." Her long green legs strode over, and her head was in full bobble throttle as her extended finger wagged.

"Play that the correct direction, young man." As she spoke her warning, the piece of invisible apple tumbled around in her mouth.

She hurried to the screen and tripped on the area carpet, her long green bean legs splayed like a peace sign on the ground. "Ryanandbryan. You fix that," she admonished again. Bryan moved to comply, but not before he realized that if he moved the projector just a few baby inches over, Mrs. Décorder, still spread out on the carpet, could assume the role — of the screen! The class burst out again in an uproarious laughter as the projection of the baby now appeared on their teacher's back. As she slowly put her hands on her long legs and bent over to get back up, things got worse before they got better. When she finally regained her composure, Mrs. Décorder's hair looked like a red umbrella blown inside out after a windstorm. "Ryanandbryan, now, you let that baby come back out!"

Bryan played "The Miracle of Birth" the right way, but it was too late. No one paid any attention because nothing seemed more miraculous than what Bryan had just done.

Out

When Mrs. Décorder spoke, each word carried about 1.55 seconds per word — 1.55285714285 to be precise. Bryan had timed her one day and taken an average. 1.55 seconds per word may not sound like a lot, but 1.55 seconds per word in a sentence of fifteen words dragged on, slowing everything down like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

1.42 1.71 1.55 1.86 1.48 1.33 1.52

Without Bryan and Ryan, no one would have made it through a day. But try telling that to his mother or the principal. Once again, Bryan had landed in her office, trying to explain his "unsuitable behavior."

His principal, Mrs. Thais, believed in being fair-minded when it came to children, but she had grown tired of seeing this particular pair of boys in her office. Today, in her doorway, stood Bryan. Tomorrow, it would be Ryan.

She motioned Bryan with her eyes and chin to come in as she finished up a call. Still speaking as the long cord on her phone followed her around to the other side of her desk, she cradled the receiver on her shoulder and walked one chair from the wall and slid another from under a round table. She set the chairs across from one another.

"Sit, sit," she directed, pointing again with her chin as she spoke. "No, no," she continued her phone call laughing. "A student. Right. Okay. Tomorrow should work just fine." She...