Orson Buggy's Lessons for Losers

Lesson 1: Don't Overthink Things

Three hours, and I still can't get to sleep.

I'm afraid if I close my eyes I'll have that same nightmare again: the one where they figure out I'm too much of a loser to start sixth grade and toss me out on my head in the lawn outside Hugh Morris Middle School to the jeers of nine hundred normal kids.

But that's just a stupid dream, right? Something like that couldn't happen in real life.

Could it?

Ok, to a normal person, probably not. But I'm talking about to me, Orson Buggy.

Yeah, that's really my name. My parents might as well have named me Kickme, or Imafreak. But it's not all their fault. I mean, how much can you really do with a last name like Buggy? They'd already used up Dune Buggy on my older brother, and I suppose it would have been worse to name me June Buggy, like they did my baby sister. Still, Orson Buggy? I mean, aside from sentencing me to a lifetime of horse-and-buggy insults, who names their kid Orson?

I bet I've heard every possible horse and buggy joke there is, which is quite a feat considering nobody is willing to talk to me. Well, not exactly nobody. I do have a handful of friends. Problem is, my friends are all idiots.

I suppose that's not fair. Andrew Pincionne is really smart. Just not smart enough to know when he's acting like an idiot, which--let's be real--is most of the time.

Nancy Hines knows lots of stuff too. But the kind of stuff Nancy knows nobody in their right mind would care about, like global warming and saving whales and what I call touchy-feely stuff.

I suppose my friend Donny Kreger isn't stupid either. He's on my soccer team. Not that that makes him smart or anything. I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, he's into even stranger things than Nancy, like electronic gadgets and computers. Not fun computer stuff, like games and videos. Weird stuff, like AI and distributed programming and neural net something or others.

Wait, Bobby Spizuto. Now there's an idiot. He's two years older than me (yeah, I know, it's "less than I," but that sounds so stupid only someone like Andrew Pincionne would say it). Anyway, I like Bobby and all, but let's face it. He would be at Holmes Elementary forever if they hadn't kept pushing him up to the next grade. Ask him to add two plus two twice and you'll get two different answers. Maybe three.

I guess what I'm trying to say is my friends are all losers. Actually, make that Losers, with a capital L. The worst of the worst. I'm not trying to put them down--they are my friends, after all--I'm just saying it's hard to be taken seriously when Donny Kreger plops down next to you in the lunchroom and starts droning on about how excited he is to configure a new firewall on his router doohickey.

I think I may actually be a loser magnet. I don't even know how it happens. I'll see one kid making fun of another and do something stupid, like open my mouth to stop it. Or maybe some goofy guy will want to be my friend, and I'll make the mistake of not laughing in his face. I'm just way too nice for my own good. Point is, stupid name or not, no one could be cool with friends like mine. I'm what you call an LBA.

Loser by Association.

But this year I have hope. Tomorrow I'll be starting sixth grade at a new school, which up until a few weeks ago I'd have said would just be more of the same, given that all my Loser friends would be changing schools with me. But now Mom tells me that thanks to some sort of rezoning that took effect, I'll be headed to Hugh Morris Middle School, while everyone on the west side of Roberts Road will move on to McKinley. That means good-bye Andrew, good-bye Donny, good-bye Bobby.

Nancy Hines will be changing schools with me, but that's okay. She's been pining over me since the first grade, so I'm pretty used to her by now. And just because some skeezy girl has a crush on me doesn't make it my fault. It just means she sees what all the other girls should see. Orson Buggy is a catch.

And there's my problem. After five years together at Holmes, everyone knew who I was and pretty much ignored me, but now I'm starting over, with all new kids. Once everyone finds out my stupid name, there's sure to be a whole new outbreak of horse-and-buggy insults.

I have just one hope. Mom says my piano teacher, Miss Pell, is assigned to be my homeroom teacher, too, so last week I asked her to spread the word for the other teachers to keep my last name to themselves and just call me Ori. With luck I can get in good with all the new kids before they find out my parents' curse.

It's all part of a plan I call Operation New Friends. Part of me feels like I've got every angle covered. I just need to 1) show up at the new school, 2) don't let anyone know my name, and 3) never, ever mention my friends from Holmes. Easy peasy. I should be walking on top of the world, or at least on top of Elk Grove, Indiana. That's what they call the town where I live. I don't know why. I've never even seen a deer here, let alone an elk.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I should be walking on top of the world. Trouble is, part of me knows that just when I think I've got every angle covered, I'm probably about to find out I don't know the first thing about geometry. Don't judge. I'm only eleven. They don't teach us that stuff until high school. Something else to look forward to. Not.

But that's why I keep having the same stupid nightmare about getting tossed out on my head on the school lawn. Which is dumb, right? Because stuff like that doesn't happen in real life. Period.

I'm pretty sure.