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It is not polite to say shut up.

This is why I said it.

The morning my dad left, I didn't even stop reading the cereal box to look at him. I remember the picture of the prize. It was a shiny red submarine that you put baking soda in and it bubbles under water. That's all I can remember. Except maybe the smell of Old Spice.

What really kills me is that I'm not even sure about that.

Maybe I remember the Old Spice because I snuck it out of the trash before Clarissa carried it out with the rest of his stuff. I put the Old Spice bottle in a sock. It was a green woolen knee sock, long enough to tie the end in a knot. I hid it in my underwear and socks' drawer.

My dad used to say that if you say something really important, you should look straight into someone's eyes, so that's why I held Boatswain up with both my hands and looked him straight in the eyes. Boatswain is a bear. It's spelled different than you say it. You say Bosun. My dad taught me that. He gave me Boatswain when I turned one. That's when my mother died. But I don't remember her. My dad named me Alexander after Alexander Pope who had a pet named Boatswain. I told Boatswain that from now on he would have to share our bed with Tromploy. That's what I called the sock with my dad's Old Spice in it. My dad told me that in some places far away they paint windows and pillars on houses to fool you. He said it was called tromploy. I decided I was going to fool Clarissa into thinking Tromploy was just a sock.

After Clarissa turned off the hall light, I got Tromploy and held him on my face. I smelled my dad and made myself remember the last morning I saw him. I thought if I tried hard enough, I might see what he wore, whether he smiled, whether he touched my head. I wanted to stop seeing the red submarine on the cereal box and see a movie of my dad. I tried every night. But every night I only saw the red submarine. When I cried I used Tromploy as a kleenex.

The hard part was remembering to hide Tromploy under my pillow before I fell asleep. I couldn't let Clarissa find him in the morning when she woke me up. She wouldn't count and dance that behaviour. Clarissa was always telling me what behaviour she wouldn't count and dance.

Clarissa married my dad after my mom died. That's when we moved to Canada. My mom and dad grew up in England. They both went to schools where they slept over. Clarissa went to a girls' school with my mom and when she came to live with us my dad said that she was very kind to come and take care of us. Clarissa is really skinny. Even her lips are skinny. The first time she came over was right after my dad gave me Boatswain. Maybe that's why she seemed so bony like a skeleton. Maybe I was comparing her to Boatswain who was almost as big as half of me and has soft fur that's brown like hot chocolate. I remember Clarissa said that she was pleased to meet me and shook my hand. I looked at my dad. He said weren't we lucky to have Clarissa come to live with us and she would be like a mom to me. She didn't look like a mom. At least not like the moms in my picture books.

After Clarissa came to live with us I only saw my dad at breakfast time. He got home from work really late. He was a sollisidoor. Clarissa told me he worked very hard and I should be grateful. I wasn't.

I never knew why my dad left and didn't come home again. I asked Clarissa and every time I asked her, she said she didn't know. One day when I said maybe he'll come home for Christmas, Clarissa said he wouldn't ever come home again. Clarissa told me that I was the man of the house now. We were sitting at the dinner table. I was watching my fork bounce the light off of our shiny wood table. Clarissa said that my dad wouldn't be coming back because they found his briefcase at the Pelican Crossing. She said that the only thing in the briefcase was a note that said he'd send us money every month, so Clarissa said I wasn't to worry about how we'd make ends meet. She squeezed her skinny lips so they turned up at the sides. I don't know which ends she was talking about.

That night in bed, I gave up trying to remember the morning my dad went away. I made a pact with Boatswain and Tromploy that we would find the Pelican Crossing and find my dad. I knew there was something Clarissa wasn't telling me. So the next day I went to the librarian at my school and asked her for all the books she had on pelicans. I learned a lot about pelicans but not one book explained where the Pelican Crossing was. I figured it had to be somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico since that's where they went in the winter. When I read that American pelicans love to be together with their families, I thought that maybe my dad went to see my mom at the Pelican Crossing and that maybe if I just stayed here at home, they would come back and find me. The night I told that to Boatswain and Tromploy, I felt really happy and I didn't even cry. But I forgot to hide Tromploy under the pillow.

When I woke up Tromploy was gone. At breakfast I pretended that nothing was different. Every time Clarissa left the kitchen, I looked for Tromploy. First the garbage. Then her hiding place behind the coat rack. I tried to sniff for Tromploy. When I got home from school, Clarissa was shoveling the snowy steps. I ran upstairs and opened her closet. There were some boxes on the top shelf. I didn't hear her coming.

I felt her hand on my collar. She said she wouldn't count and dance such behaviour and that if I was looking for the sock I could jolly well stop because it was gone and I had better grow up and she had done everything, no, more than everything that could be expected of her under the circumstances and that I was going to boarding school as I should have a long time ago because there I would learn to grow up and grow up fast because no one would coddle me there and that was my problem, I had been coddled far too much and that was going to stop.

One week later she sent me here, to this school. When she told me that she had packed all my clothes and that I wouldn't be taking Boatswain, I lied and told her that I had thrown Boatswain out but really I'd hidden him and then put him in the knapsack that she'd packed with all my school books. I put the school books under the living room couch and the knapsack was my tromploy. I told myself that I wouldn't need the sock with the Old Spice any more because I was going to find my dad and my mom by running away to the Pelican Crossing. I knew I had to find someone I could trust to help me figure out how to get there.

When I came into your class today, I thought maybe it was you. Because you made me remember my dad. You smell like my dad and you talk like him. You said biscuits not cookies. I started to see my dad in my head. I started to remember the breakfast. I think my dad had porridge. So when I heard you say the words Pelican Crossing, that there was a Pelican Crossing near the school, my heart started knocking. I knew I would learn the truth.

I put up my hand and asked you what the Pelican Crossing looks like. You looked at me and then laughed. You said, here it's called a cross walk - that Pelican Crossing is what they call a cross walk with traffic lights in England. That's when I yelled shut up, shut up, shut up. Because my dad just left his briefcase at the crosswalk on the corner right beside my house. So I yelled shut up because that's when I figured out it's all a tromploy.

I shouldn't have yelled shut up.
But you shouldn't have laughed.
1500 words on why it's not polite to say shut up by Alexander Griffen.