Page 48 of What You Wish For

In fact, he turned out to be a book eater.

Not once, but twice on the first day of school, he found his way intothe library and chewed up books. First, a Mo Willems boxed set. Then, after lunch,The Secret Garden.

Both times, I walked him back down to Duncan. “Seriously?” I demanded, holding out the mutilatedSecret Garden—now missing a full third of its binding.

“I think he might be teething. I found a tooth in the carpet earlier.”

“Not okay. Get him a chew toy.”

Duncan nodded, like that was actually a good idea. “I will.”

“And don’t let him just roam around school.”

“It’s looking like he can open my office door.”

“And the library doors,” I added.

“I thought he was napping,” Duncan said.

“Well, he wasn’t,” I said. “He was roaming around loose.”

“I’m sorry about the books. I’ll pay for them.”

“Great,” I said, all deadpan. “I’ll put them on your tab.”

That dog, in fact, made quite a name for himself on the first day of school. By car pool, he’d climbed up on Mrs. Kline’s desk, eaten a whole box of tissues, chased a squirrel across the courtyard, gotten his collar caught on a tree branch, barked at his own reflection in the office doors for a full five minutes, peed on the carpet in the kindergarten room, chewed a hole in Coach Gordo’s gym bag, and stolen a whole bag of hot-dog buns from the cafeteria.

Not to mention when he tried to take a flying leap into Alice’s arms during recess and knocked all six feet of her down to the ground.

Alice didn’t mind. She was a dog person. But Coach Gordo was none too happy about the gym bag. “What the hell, man?” he’d said, after Duncan handed him back a decapitated sock and a drool-soaked pair of boxer briefs.

“He’s still in training,” Duncan said.

Anyway, that was the moment that prompted Duncan’s first faculty-wide memo of the day.

Memos are never good things in the world of education—or maybe anywhere. If nothing else, they’re usually dull, and repetitive, and,as Max always put it, TLTR—Too Long To Read. Max had banished memos entirely before I even arrived—replacing them with IOMs—Instead Of Meetings. These were basically… memos. But Max enforced a strict, hundred-word length, limited them to Fridays (when we were “almost free”), and emphasized that he was only sending them so we could avoid an MSM—a Meeting that Should’ve been a Memo.

Context is kind of everything.

Max’s guiding principle was to respect us as teachers—our ideas, our input, and, most important, our time. Memos, in Max’s view, were the very worst waste of all of those things.

But Duncan, as they say, hadn’t gotten the memo on that.

And if Max knew the value of calling actual memos by other names, Duncan did the opposite: He called an email that wasn’t even a memo… a memo.

Five minutes after the Sock Incident, there it was, in all our inboxes. And it read:

From: Duncan Carpenter

RE: MEMO—SECURITY DOG

Many of you got a chance to “meet” the Kempner School’s new security dog, Chuck Norris, when he stole a box of donuts from the faculty lounge and made an epic escape attempt—which was thwarted by security guard Raymond when he got tangled in the leash. Fortunately, no one was hurt, though I regret to report that none of the donuts survived.

In future, all members of the school community must stay aware that Chuck Norris is still in training and will need our help to succeed. Please do not pet, play with, scratch, talk to, coo at, or in any way agitate Chuck Norris while he’s on the school campus. All forms of human affection are a distraction from his duties as he learns to watch over our campus and keep us all safe. For his benefit, as well as everyone else’s, all interaction with Chuck Norris is expressly forbidden.

Two minutes after I got that email, through the library window that overlooked the cloisters, I saw Chuck Norris steal a kid’s lunch box, and then get chased across the courtyard by a whole class of second graders, his fur undulating and his fluffy face and bright black eyes loving every minute of everything.

Then I watched Duncan come out, scold the dog, return the lunch box to its owner, and sternly point the kids toward the lunchroom. Leave it to this new version of Duncan to bring an adorable dog onto campus and then forbid all forms of affection.

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