Laggan Lard Butts (2 page)

At least this year those stupid Mustangs weren't going to win it all. It looked like they were going to finish second. They had lost both of their games with the other big city school. Not that I necessarily liked that team any better.

“I'm really proud of you boys!” Mr. Davidson called out over the sound of the engine.

I had to hand it to him. He never got down. He always seemed to be able to find the silver lining in any cloud—even a storm cloud.

“Can you imagine how much prouder you'd be if we'd won the game?” Tanner asked.

“Wouldn't make any difference. First place or eighth, I'm just as proud. It isn't whether you win or lose—”

“It's how you play the game!” we yelled back, cutting him off.

I don't know how many times we'd heard him say that. Certainly a lot more times than the number of wins we'd had.

“And, who knows, we might still win it all,” he said.

“How do you figure that?” Taylor asked.

“We are solidly in seventh place.”

Great, seventh place in an eight-team league. Made me feel proud.

“And our last game is against the team
that is just ahead of us in the standings. Martintown,” Mr. Davidson said. We'd lost to Martintown by only two points in our first meeting. That game had been a heart-breaker. It was better to lose by a lot than by a little. “If we beat them we'll finish in sixth place.”

“Sixth place, my dream,” I said sarcastically.

“We're number six! We're number six!” Tanner started chanting and the whole van— except me—joined in.

“And!” Mr. Davidson said, silencing the cheer, “if we finish sixth that means we make the play-offs.”

“That would be great!” somebody said. Yeah, right, great.

“Who would we play in the first round?” I asked.

“I think sixth place plays the team in first place.”

There was sudden silence from everybody. We all knew what that meant. If we did make the play-offs our last game was going to be a blowout of epic size. Go, Lairds, go.

“I think we do really well,” Mr. Davidson said, “relative to the size of our school. We're so much smaller than every other school in the league.”

He did have a point. Martintown had over eight hundred kids. We had one hundred and fifty kids between kindergarten and grade eight. We had ten grades with an average of fifteen kids per grade. I didn't even know what it was like to not be in a split class. Martintown had more grade seven and eight kids than we had in our entire school. More kids tried out for the teams and that usually meant there were more kids who could play well.

I looked around the bus. We had ten kids on the team. Three of us could play basketball. Everybody else had a vague idea at best. It wasn't really their fault. Cody couldn't play basketball to save his life, but he was a great hockey player—a goalie. He was a lot better at hockey than I was, a lot better than any of us. Kevin was a great skateboarder and Kyle was a swimmer. We had lots of people who were good at
something. We just didn't have enough kids who were all good at the same thing to make up a team that could win.

It also didn't help that most of us lived on farms. It wasn't as if we could get together on the street outside our houses and play pickup games. We lived miles and miles apart. There wasn't even a street where we could play. We had dirt roads. No park, no hoops, no ice. Just lots of fields.

Laggan public school sat in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by farms. I could always tell which direction the wind was blowing by the odor in the air.

If it smelled bad the wind was coming from the west, the direction of a big pig farm. I read that pigs were clean. Maybe one or two were but a few hundred certainly didn't smell clean.

If the wind blew from the east it passed the sunflower fields and was sort of sweet. When they were in bloom the smell was almost overwhelming.

From the north I could smell the city— actually I could smell the KFC at the edge of town.
It was amazing how far that smell could travel, especially around lunchtime.

Wind from the south meant no smell at all.

“Mr. Davidson, I have a question,” Taylor asked.

“Go ahead, shoot.”

“I was wondering...and I really should know this, so it's pretty stupid.”

“There are no stupid questions,” Mr. Davidson said.

Only stupid people asking them, I thought, but didn't say.

“Can you tell me what a laird is?”

“Laird. It is a Scottish word.”

“I knew that,” I chipped in from the back.

“The whole history of our community is Scottish. That's why we have so many Campbells, and Turners, McDonalds and, of course, Davidsons.”

“So what does it mean?” I asked.

“It is Scottish for lord.”

“Lord, like God?” somebody asked.

“More like lord of the manor, the owner of an estate,” Mr. Davidson said.

“I guess that isn't so bad.”

“And most people, most of our students and teachers, say it wrong. It should be pronounced as if it were spelled l – a – r – d. We are the Laggan
Lards
.”

“Lard? You mean like fat?” Tanner asked
and
gave me a funny look.

“You would say it that way, yes.”

Tanner leaned close to me. “Maybe Lard Butts wasn't so far off,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

“Great, just great,” I muttered. “Isn't it bad enough that we're a joke without having a stupid name?” I demanded.

“It's a name with tradition,” Mr. Davidson said.

“Just like our tradition of losing,” I said.

“I'm not sure that's a tradition as much as an unfortunate situation,” Mr. Davidson said. “If we look at winning and losing according to the size of the school we'd definitely be winners.”

“I'll keep that in mind if they ever start keeping score that way,” I said.

“And do you think the name would make a difference?” Mr. Davidson asked.

“I don't know if it would make any difference, but at least the other team could only make fun of how we play and not what we're called.”

“Interesting. Perhaps there is something we can do about it,” Mr. Davidson said.

“You have an idea?” Taylor asked.

“Perhaps. First let me think things through. We'll talk more tomorrow in class.”

“Everybody please sit down,” Mr. Davidson said.

We all stopped talking and settled into our seats.

“Before we start on our new project I want to review what we've learned so far. Let's talk about democracy. Can somebody give me a definition?”

Hands shot up around the room.

“Sarah.”

“Democracy is a Greek word which means rule of the people.”

“Very good.”

Sarah gave her smug little smile. She thought she was never wrong about anything. The part that annoyed me the most was that she
was
almost always right. We'd been in the same class—all of us had been in the same class—since kindergarten. I'd met her on the second day of class, the day after I met the twins. With the twins it had been buddies at first sight. With Sarah it was an emotion somewhere between aggravated and annoyed. She could drive me crazy.

Sarah was a triple threat. She had been chosen to give the graduation speech, she was the student president and she was, without a doubt, the number one teacher suck-up of all time.

I was looking forward to next year. I was tired of having the same kids in my class, year after year, after year, after year. We'd all be going to the same high school, the
big
high school, but we wouldn't be alone. We would be with kids from every school around here.
There would be hundreds of kids in grade nine. Hundreds and hundreds. With my luck Sarah would be in my class and Tanner and Taylor would be in another.

“Now democracy is a Greek word... because...?” Mr. Davidson asked.

Sarah's hand shot into the air, as did a whole lot of other hands.

“Tanner?”

“Because democracy began in ancient Greece in city states.”

“Like Athens,” Taylor said.

They had a “twin thing” and often completed each other's sentences and thoughts. They also completed each other's plans and plots—plots that often got the three of us in trouble. We'd all spent a fair amount of time in the office this year, although I had the lead in that race.

“Yeah, it was in Athens,” Tanner said. “That's where they started giving every person the right to vote.”

“Not every person,” Sarah said. “Every
man
.”

She said “man” like it was a bad word.
She had this anti-male thing. At least she'd had that attitude since I had broken up with her two weeks earlier. She probably believed she was the one that broke up with me, but we both knew that was a pile of...

I couldn't believe I'd ever, ever gone out with her. What an idiot I'd been. Why would I date somebody who drives me crazy?

“Actually,” I said as I stuck up my hand, “it wasn't any man. It was any rich man.”

“Correct, Sam. Only males who owned property were allowed to vote.”

“That's so unfair,” Sarah said.

About as unfair was having her around all the time.

“I guess they figured that women weren't ready for the responsibility of voting,” I said. “Maybe the men thought women were too busy cooking and shopping.”

An “ooohhh” went up from the class. Tanner and Taylor started to applaud.

“Come on, Sam, you don't actually believe that, do you?” our teacher asked.

I had the urge to say yes, but I didn't really believe it. I shook my head.

“When
did
women finally get the right to vote?” Mr. Davidson asked.

The only hand that went up was Sarah's. He motioned to her.

“The very first place was Wyoming in 1869. That was only two thousand years after men first got the vote.”

“I'm surprised it didn't take longer,” Tanner said.

“And what country first gave women the vote?” Mr. Davidson asked.

Again, only Sarah's hand rose. She hadn't just done all the reading: she'd memorized all of it.

“New Zealand, 1893.”

“Yes. A little country on the far side of the world was the first. We have talked about
men
and
women
getting the vote. At what age are people able to vote?”

Lots of hands went up, and Mr. Davidson motioned to Cody.

“Some places it's eighteen and in other countries nineteen, twenty, even twenty-one.”

“Different ages. Is there any country that allows sixteen-year-olds to vote?”

Nobody offered an answer.

“What about thirteen-year-olds?” he asked.

I knew the answer to that. “None,” I said. “Nobody would let a bunch of kids our age vote.”

“That, my friend, is where you are wrong,” Mr. Davidson said. “Right here, right now, you are being given the right to vote.”

“We are?” Tanner asked.

“Yes. I think the best way to learn about democracy is to take part in a democratic process.”

“Like when I was elected student president?” Sarah asked with that little smug smile on her face.

“I don't think that qualifies, since you were the only one who ran for the job,” I pointed out.

Tanner and Taylor chuckled.

“He certainly is correct,” Mr. Davidson said. “And since there was no election for a student president there was no exercise in democracy.”

“So what exactly are we going to vote for in this election?” Taylor asked.

“Something we talked about yesterday.” We had talked about lots of things, but I really wasn't paying that much attention to any of it.

“On the drive back to school after the game yesterday,” Mr. Davidson added.

“You mean the name of the school teams?” I asked.

He nodded his head. “Would you like to explain our conversation to those who weren't in the van?”

“I guess I could.” I took a deep breath. “We were talking about how we don't like the name of our school teams.”

“You don't like the Lairds?” Sarah gasped.

“No? Do you?”

“It's the name we've always used, and I'm an
athletic supporter
.”

Everybody started giggling and laughing.

“I mean I support our teams.” “I figured you didn't mean you were a jock strap,” I said. “But why do we have to
have such a stupid name? Do you even know what a Laird is?”

“Well...well it's...it's Scottish.”

“So are haggis and kilts and bagpipes, but we don't have to be the Laggan Bagpipes, do we?”

“I kinda like the sound of that,” Tanner joked. “The Laggan Bagpipes blow another game. That works.”

“I think a different name might be better. I'm suggesting that we pick some names, discuss the pros and cons of each pick and then we hold an election for the new name.”

“And whatever name we choose will actually replace the Lairds?” I asked.

“Well, we really don't have the authority to do that... This will be more like a mock election.”

“Mock?” Justin asked.

“That's another word for fake,” I explained. Sarah wasn't the only smart one in the room.

“I don't get it, Mr. Davidson. If you want us to experience democracy shouldn't it be
real?” Tanner asked. “Shouldn't we vote for something that really matters?”

“Ideally,” he agreed. “But, as I said, I can't make that decision.”

“Who can?” I asked.

“Probably our principal, Mr. McGregor.”

“Then maybe we should talk to him,” Taylor said. The rest of the class agreed.

Mr. Davidson didn't answer right away. He was thinking. Finally he nodded his head in agreement. “Let's see what he has to say.”