pearls before swine

Science is almost always the biggest waste of time. We never get to go to the lab because Deongelo and Edwin are idiots. Even when Mr. Wick tries to do easy stuff so we can earn going in the lab, Deongelo and Edwin ruin it because they curse and are playfighting. I mean, it’s hilarious, but it’s also stupid because then we never get to go in the lab and we just do stupid worksheets and that just makes them act up more, so also it’s stupid of Mr. Wick to do that. It’s like our afterschool teacher says, nothing works with seventh graders because we are hellbent on ruining everything. Hellbent is a curse, but she says she’s allowed to say it because it’s in literature and we curse more than her anyway. And we do.

But science has been NOT a waste of time this week, it has been pretty cool but also gross. We are dissecting pigs. They are baby pigs or something, and they look really nasty and kind of see-through but it is cool that we are doing something in Science that is not worksheets. We are working in groups to dissect the pig and learn about its body parts and anatomy. Deongelo and Edwin are actually good at it, go figure. It is disturbing that the only time they don’t talk is when they are cutting a dead pig, but whatever.

I wanted to try to cut it but when it was my turn I got sick. Like, at first I thought I was going to only be a little bit sick in my throat, but I don’t know. It was something about how it felt cutting it, it felt like cutting an orange. Like a really nasty orange. And I just started remembering this pig that used to run around my cousin’s house in Puerto Rico and even though that pig was bigger, I don’t know, I guess I just started confusing the pigs or something because all of a sudden I just missed Puerto Rico a lot and I felt really bad for that pig and I…I puked, man. It was gross.

All of the kids are always mean to me anyways, calling me stupid and ugly and say I look like Shrek, but when I puked they were even more mean. For a second I didn’t think it was as bad as it felt but when I opened my eyes I looked and it was really bad. Some of my puke even got on the pig. They said I puked because I felt bad for cutting up my own kind. Mr. Wick yelled at them to shut up, but even he looked mad that I puked on the pig. I hated my life.

For the rest of the week Mr Wick told me to take it easy and to read articles about Science he had on his computer. One of the articles was about this woman who brought a heart back to life. The heart was a a dead rat heart, and she cleaned it off really good with this chemical from shampoo. And once it was really, really clean she put all these new rat heart cells in it to see what would happen. And the new rat cells brought the dead heart to life. The rat heart started to beat again. It was like a zombie or something, but not evil or anything. Everyone who the woman knew was really happy for her. I guess they think one day we will be able to bring back friends and cousins and people you really miss. People who it just breaks your life to lose, you can bring back one day.

When I asked Mr Wick why she started on a rat heart and not a people heart, he said in Science you have to think big but start small.

I have been thinking. I am going to bring in shampoo tomorrow because tomorrow they get to the heart part of dissecting. I know we need more than a heart to live. But this kind of science is like magic. If you can bring a heart back from the dead, it should just start pumping blood into all the dead things and wake them up. And the legs and the brains and the guts will think they are alive and then soon enough they will actually be alive. And then the pig will wake up and it will be exactly the same except it will not think it is ugly anymore, or gross, even if it still smells like formaldehyde which it probably still will unless I bring in some perfume but even perfume mixed with that smell would be gross. But the pig won’t think it smells gross. It will think it smells like magic. Because no matter what, it broke every rule. It is a magic pig.

I got Mr Wick to print out the article for me. He is glad I am reading more advanced this year.

I am going to go home and study and come here and bring the heart back. Then I will keep the pig as a pet and teach it all new things about life. I am going to be really good to that pig.