the salamis in "science vs. magic" (a mostly true story)

7/27/2019 The Salamis in "Science Vs. Magic" (a mostly true story)

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The Salami Family in

(a mostly very true story)

The Salami Family in

by Tunbridge Wells illustrated by Tim Forbus

(a mostly very true story)



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for Nora Beth and Tally Jo

Christmas 2013



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So Annoying

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum was trying to get ready for school but her father was

aggravating her. Just his general presence aggravated her in the morning. Dutchy Whalers-Rum

was a big man with a big hairy belly. His belly was so big that when he ate, his shirt popped up

and everyone could see his big hairy belly even more. He had a mustache like an old walrus

under his nose and not much hair on top of his head that no one could see because he always

wore a red plaid cap with woolly earflaps that snapped under his chin, and the hat had a woolly

brim that snapped up over his forehead. He always smelled like sourdough bread or maybe a wet

dog. Even his name was aggravating because it was spelled Dutchy but pronounced Dootchy

because it came from the word for German, Deutsch, and Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum wasn’t

even German or Dutch, but just kind of Dootchy, and let’s just say that anything Dootchy did

wasn’t very sophisticated.

The most aggravating thing of all was that Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum kind of made

farty sounds when he talked. Everything he said was filled with extra fttttttttttp’s and

ssssssssrrrrrrrrurrrrrrttttt’s and bbbbbbrrrrrrrrpppttt’s among other farty sounds. Plus he spit

when he spoke. And all of that was so annoying to one Miss Nora Whalers-Rum of the first

grade at Agape Visitation School of Advanced Biological Sciences, General Rocket Physics,



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Complicated Mathematics, Applied Magnetics, Interesting Chemistries, Useful Geology, and

Computer Artistry of the Best Kind --AVS for short.

AVS was a very good school. The teachers there were very keen on all the sciences of the

whole universe, and every single day before school, the headmaster, Dr. Frederico, conducted a

science experiment in front of the entire school. And sometime during the experiment – which

was done on a stage — Dr. Frederico’s lovely assistant Danika Dankin would ask the audience of

the AVS elementary school, “Is it magic or is it science?”

Whereupon every single child enrolled in that school would shout out, “Science!”



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And this made Nora’s father very upset, because Dutchy Whalers-Rum did not believe in

science at all and insisted that everything was magic, which was really quite annoying to Nora

Whalers-Rum who did believe in science completely and absolutely like all other intelligent

people.

That day before school Daddy Dutchy Whales-Rum was being particularly annoying

because he was turning on the tap to their very old sink in their very old house while saying,

“Water , Appear! Ftptpt.” And this was particularly annoying because he had started the day by

walking into the room and yelling, “Abracadabra! Ftptptf. Lights on!” whereupon he flicked a

light switch and turned on the lights.

And to be even further annoying, Daddy Whalers-Rum had just yelled, “Lunch, appear!

Fptptt.” And then he picked up a very neatly packed zippered lunch satchel which Mommy

Swami Salami had packed for Nora with her own two hands and no magic at all, which Nora

Whalers-Rum had watched her do while she ate her egg white omelet and bowl of cheese grits

for breakfast.

And to make the whole morning even more annoying, Nora Whalers-Rum’s annoying

little sister Tally Salami Whalers-Rum was doing her usual annoying thing of running around

without her pajama bottoms on while doing a kooky dance where she danced around and pointed

her two year-old butt at everything in the room while she blew raspberries.

“Fffpfpftptptptptptptptptptpttttttttptptttt!”

And while that was going on, Mommy Salami was standing on one foot while her other

foot was tucked behind the big sparkling green turban she wore wrapped around her very long

hair. On top of that, Mommy Salami was juggling everything she put into the lunches. Apples.

Carrots. Juice boxes. Greek yogurt containers. Biodegradable compostable spoons. Napkins.



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Celery sticks. Baggies of pretzels and almonds. And cucumber sandwiches without crusts.

Juggle. Juggle. Juggle. Daddy Dutchy liked crusts so he got a baggy of everyone else’s crusts in

his lunch satchel.

Tally Salami twirled while blowing raspberries, “Flllllllppppppppppptttttttt.”

Daddy Dutchy was commanding the coffee maker to magically make coffee, “I command

you, frrrprrrrpt, to brew coffee!”

By this time, Mommy Salami had bent her leg the other way all the way around and was

scratching an itch in the small of her back with her big toe.

“Flllpptttrtp,” Daddy Dutchy said, looking at the clock on the stove, “Let’s go to school,

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum.”



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Pee Pants in School

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum hated their car, a very old Honda which had been blue

once, maybe, but was now mostly peeling paint and rust. Both bumpers were held on with

bungee cords. One headlight dangled f rom wires. The turn signals didn’t work , so Daddy Dutchy

Whalers-Rum kept the window rolled down so he could yell out the window and signal with his

arms. But the most annoying thing about their old Honda was that it sounded like an elaborate

jazzy drum solo when it rolled down the street. tink. bink. plink. tap tap. tump thump bump. doo

wah. crazh. crash, bink tink choo.

That was the sound track of their ride to and from school every day: tink. bink. plink. tap

tap. tump thump bump. doo wah. crazh. crash, bink tink choo. Dutchy Daddy waved his arms

and yelled out the windows, “HELLO, fffptptptptpt, I’M TURNING RIGHT HERE! RIGHT!

RIGHT! RIGHT!” Then he shouted, “LEFT, HEY YOU, ffptpttpt, I’M TURNI NG HERE,

LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, fpfptptpt!”

Their car was the only car like their car in the whole AVS parking lot. And Daddy

Dutchy was the only daddy like Daddy Dutchy of all the AVS dads. Since AVS was a school of

Advanced Biological Sciences, General Rocket Physics, Complicated Mathematics, Applied

Magnetics, Interesting Chemistries, Useful Geology, and Computer Artistry of the Best Kind

most of the fathers worked professionally in the fields of Advanced Biological Sciences, General

Rocket Physics, Complicated Mathematics, Applied Magnetics, Interesting Chemistries, Useful



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Geology, and Computer Artistry of the Best Kinds. Most of the dads were brain surgeons,

doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, and web designers

who worked for Goobler, Papaya, Fudgebook, Chirp, Delphi Inc., NASA, or they were working

for their own little baby companies called Start-ups which would someday be as big as Goobler,

Papaya, Fudgebook, Chirp, Delphi Inc., or NASA or be sold to Goobler, Papaya, Fudgebook,

Chirp, Delphi Inc., or NASA. Those dads looked like regular dads. They were skinny, had neatly

combed hair on their heads, and no walrus mustaches. The only headgear the normal dads wore

were bicycle helmets when they rode bikes to school and they certainly did not wear woolly

plaid hats with earflaps. And the normal dads didn’t make farty sounds before and after they

talked, ffftprrrrt. And regular dads didn’t wear uniforms.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum wore a blue polyester uniform which was two sizes too

small and stained with a thousand lunches and a million snacks and a bazillion drips of coffee all

down the front. He wore a polyester shirt under that used to be white but was now gray and

stained with a gazillion more drips of coffee. He wore a clip-on black tie that sat askew, and

which he used as a napkin to clean his walrus mustache. And Daddy Dutchy had a badge. A

plastic silver badge he wore on his suit jacket pocket that announced to everyone that he was the

Security Guard for San Francisco California USA Famers Market Security Company or the

S.F.CA.U.S.A.F.M.S.CO. for short. In San Francisco, the moveable farmers market went to a

different neighborhood every day of the week, to which Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum would

travel by bicycle and then rest his hands on his belly and squint menacingly at fruit and veggie

shoppers who took too many free samples. Dutchy Whalers-Rum also blocked any cyclist trying

to cycle through the farmers market, as cycling through the farmers market was strictly



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for bidden. “GET OFF YOUR BICYCLE NOW, SIR! Fptptptt!” Dutchy would yell at anyone

brazen enough to attempt cycling through a farmers market on his watch.

Vendors at the farmers market said he was their favorite guard. Other guards just looked

at their phones all day and ignored irreverent cyclists and free sample hoarders. Not Dutchy. He

drank coffee, scowled at people pigging samples, and yelled at cyclists so loudly they sometimes

ran into light poles or piles of rotten fruit in the green compost bins.

Dutchy might have been a very good farmers market security guard but he was an

embarrassing father. Like that day, when all the children were dutifully lined up in proper rows

sitting with their legs crossed and making the quiet coyote symbol with their hands to show that

they were properly ready for that day’s topical science experiment. The quiet coyote was formed

by putting your index and pinky fingers up like the coyote’s ears while the thumb and two

middle fingers formed the coyote’s closed mouth, which meant, Be Quiet Now. Even some of the

parents made the quiet coyote sign, but not Daddy Dutchy who was in the back of the auditorium

wheezing and stomping about and making slightly farty sounds. “Bbbpppppbpbppbptrrrprt.”

Then Dr. Frederico and his lovely assistant Danika Dankins performed their science

experiment on the topic of Transference whereupon the lovely Danika Dankins blew up two big

balloons. One had water in it and one did not. When Dr. Frederico held a fiery blowtorch to the

one without water inside, the balloon popped.

BAM!

But when he held the blowtorch to the balloon with the water inside, the balloon did not

pop. Not at all. Dr. Frederico said that was because the rubber of the balloon transferred the heat

of the flame to the water. Dr. Frederico held the flame there a very long time until the water



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inside the balloon actually boiled. Danika looked very afraid the balloon would burst and shoot

the boiling water all over the crowd, but it did not.

Dr. Frederico asked very loudly, “Is this balloon not popping the result of SCIENCE or

MAGIC?”

And the whole student body and all the super-smart mothers and fathers in attendance

shouted, “SCIENCE!”

All except for one rather large man with a big belly standing in the back of the room in a

hat with woolly earflaps and an askew clip-on tie. “Magic,” he asserted, “ffttptpttptpt.”

And the beautiful Danika Dankins asked the entire school. “Is it always SCIENCE?”

“YES!” everyone yelled, even the dads and moms looking into their smartphones yelled.

“IT IS ALWAYS SCIENCE.”

All except for one voice at the back of the room. “It’s always magic, ffff ffppppptptptpt, I

daresay,” Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum announced rather quietly but with great certainty. “It’s

always magic, fffphpt, yes, magic, ffptptpt.”

Although Dutchy had spoken softly, the very observant Dr. Frederico heard him and

asked respectfully. “Mr. Dutchy Whalers-Rum can you explain your answer, please?”

“Certainly, ffffphth,” Dutchy said and waddled to the front of the class so fast the

earflaps on his hat flapped. He pointed to the inflated balloon. “This balloon which can resist

heated flames is obviously a very magic balloon indeed. As you all can see it is still inflated

proving how magic it indeed is, ffffphth.”

Dr. Frederico chuckled. “This ordinary balloon is transferring the heat from the flame to

the water inside so the rubber of the balloon does not melt. Transference is the name of that

property in the study physics, which is the study of how matter and energy interact.”



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“Magic is absolutely the name for what’s going on here, fpfpptpt.” Dutchy insisted. “This

is a magic balloon that can resist flames and I can prove it too.”

Danika Dankins asked the students again. “Is it magic or science?”

“SCIENCE!” everyone shouted.

“Well, let’s see,” Dutchy said as he held the inflated balloon partially filled with water.

He shook it and when he attempted to open the mouth of the balloon to look inside, water shot all

over his face like a spouting garden hose. “Well, ffffphth,” he said. The children laughed and

clapped and then quieted quickly down because they were polite students and knew when to be

quiet which was actually quite often. When a few students chortled, other students made the

quiet coyote sign with their hands and shushed them.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum huffed and puffed and re-inflated the balloon with great

difficulty until the balloon was stretched very wide indeed. Dutchy looked extremely satisfied

with himself. “Now I will prove to you this is indeed a very magic balloon, fpfptptpt, Danika

Dankins, the blowtorch please, fptptpt.”

“Excuse me Mr. Whalers-Rum,” Dr. Frederico said, “but what do you think will happen

if you put that blowtorch on the balloon?”

“This magic balloon will resist the flames, sir, as we have seen before, because this is a

magic balloon.”

“But there’s no water inside the balloon for the heat of the flame to be transferred to,”

Danika said. “Therefore what will probably happen?”

“”MELT!” shouted the children.

“ Nonsense,” Dutchy shouted back. “This magic balloon has resisted flames once and

shall continue to resist flames as enduring evidence of its magicosity, ffpfpfptpt.”



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Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum held the balloon with both hands and turned to the beautiful

Danika Danikson. “Blowtorch, please, ffffphth,” he said with grandiosity.

Danika lit the blowtorch and fiddled with the long yellow flame until the flame became a

sharp blue dagger. Danika held the flame to the balloon. Dr. Frederico held his hands over his

ears. The children held their hands over their ears.

BURST! went the balloon.

“Aggggggghhhhhhh!” screamed Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum. “Ffffphth.”

Dr. Frederico smirked. “As you see children, with no water in the balloon for the heat to

be transferred to, the material of the balloon melted and the balloon popped, so obviously there

was no magic here, just--”

“No magic aside from the magic water inside the balloon which can magically protect an

ordinary balloon from a fiery popping death, ffffphth.” Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum asserted

proudly and then asked the children. “So in conclusion, was the balloon or the water magic?”

A kindergartener raised her hand. “Did you pee your pants when the balloon popped?”

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum looked down and saw a big wet spot the size of a hubcap on

his pants. “Hmmmmmmmmm. Seems like the coffee I drank on the way to school this morning

has been magically transferred to my pants when the magic balloon popped.”

“Did your dad pee his pants?” a student asked Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum.

Nora rolled her eyes and slapped her forehead.

“Well now, ffpfpptppt, I would certainly like to stay here and dissect matters of magic

proofs with you all day but I have important work to do, fptptpt, unlike some of the parents who

dawdle here.” Dutchy straightened his uniform, re-clipped his lopsided clip-on tie, kind of

bowed, then took off his earflap hat and put it in front of his pants as he walked out. “You never



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know when some villains are trying to steal tomatoes or watermelons or are trying to ride bikes

through the farmers market.” He held one arm up like a superhero about to fly. Daddy Dutchy

Whalers-Rum left through the side door with a mighty,“Ffffphth!” The entire school could hear

the old Honda rattle away. tink. bink. plink. tap tap. tump thump bump. doo wah. crazh. crash,

bink tink choo.



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About the Character of Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum



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Dutchy Whalers-Rum and Swami Salami wanted to give their daughter an earnest and

stalwart name so she’d be earnest and stalwart. They believed that names are often very

important to the outcome of one’s character. And Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum turned out

to be very earnest and stalwart as planned.

Dutchy and Salami then allowed their earnest and seriously intelligent daughter Nora to

name her forthcoming baby sister. Nora, desiring a fun spunky sister, chose a fun and spunky

name --Tallulah. Compounding matters, Dutchy and Salami wanted to utilize Swami Salami’s

maiden name from when she used to live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which was Jollineaux.

Well, Tallulah Jollineaux was such a fun name that little “Tally Jo” as her named shortened into,

was, well, rather, maybe, too fun. Tally Jo liked to run around in cowgirl boots, a tutu, and little

else as she danced and sang, “I Love You Everybody!” Tally Jo was a bit wild and pounded on

the backdoor when she had to go outside “to pee like a dog” she said. And indeed Tally Jo did

pee like a dog, which was to say, outside.

Nora on the other hand did not pee outside regularly. We all must pee outside upon

occasion, one supposed, but Nora didn’t make a delightful and exclusive practice out of urinating

that way. Nora was --to unjustly summarize, serious -- very serious. And she was extremely

serious about school and her studies. For example, she was known as a mentor at AVS, which

was to say she helped other students. Her favorite jobs were Line Leader and Line Caboose, both

of which kept everyone in line, and she was very serious about those tasks, and both her teachers

said that she was the best at all her jobs because she took them all rather seriously. While other

children tended to meander out of line and noodle about, Nora never did.



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But that was not to say that Nor a wasn’t fun. She was very fun indeed, but never during

class time and never when it wasn’t appropriate to be silly.

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum took her homework very seriously and usually came

right home after school and did her homework right away. She always brought her homework

back the next day and never forgot her library books on library day, Thursdays, well almost

never.

Nora was so serious about her studies that she even went to school all night long in her

sleep. This was proven when her father Daddy Dutchy woke her up to pee in the middle of the

night (on the potty and not outside like a dog), and half-asleep Nora was usually muttering sleep

answers to sleep questions which had been asked in her sleep school which was entirely

populated by her sleep classmates and sleep teachers who were nearly exact replicas of her

daytime classmates and daytime teachers.

Nora dressed modestly in pretty dresses that were not ostentatious, gaudy, or showy.

Nora’s grandmother, Jasmine Whalers-Rum sent her ostentatious, gaudy, and showy dresses

bedazzled with glitz and pizzazz. Grammy Jasmine dressed very jazzily herself, especially when

she was playing slot machines. Then she wore a sparkly green hat with lots of gold glitter glued

on in the shapes of lightning bolts and shooting stars.

The dresses Grammy Jasmine sent were fun to wear when Nora and Tally Jo put on a

ballet or an opera in the living room.

Nora got most of her school dresses from the Goodwill thrift store at 3rd and Evans where

they had a very large selection in her size. Nora must have had over a hundred dresses because

when Mommy Salami got paid every two weeks Mommy Salami took all the girls in the family

to the Goodwill for something new for them. Thrift stores were great inventions in that when



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someone was tired of something that was still nice, they could give it to the thrift store, and then

when someone bought that item, the money was used to train people who didn’t have jobs how

to get jobs so they too can buy whatever they wanted at the thrift stores too. One didn’t have to

buy dresses at the thrift-store, one could buy any number of things. Bicycles. Bicycle helmets.

One time Nora got a pink and black pair of soccer cleats.

Tallulah Salami liked to buy Halloween costumes and wear them all year round. Any day

of the year Tally Jo may be dressed up as a princess, a lion, a tiger, a Persian cat, a monkey, or a

Persian tiger princess monkey girl, as she liked to wear more than one costume at a time. Daddy

Dutchy Whalers-Rum liked to get very fancy tea cups from the Goodwill and drink coffee out of

them. He had four espressos every morning and the wide mouths of the fancy tea cups made it

easier for him to spill the coffee on his formerly white shirt with the patches that read

S.F.CA.U.S.A.F.M.S.CO. San Francisco California USA Famers Market Security Company.

Mommy Salami was always looking for a glittery or colorful cloth that would be good for

a turban which was a head covering that looked like a towel wrapped around someone’s hair .

Mommy Salami was also always looking for a glittery or colorful cloth to wrap around her hips

or other parts, and it was nice if all her turbans and wraps sometimes matched up, which

sometimes they did.

Nora Gabora, on the other hand, liked humble dresses with maybe a trim of embroidered

flowers or clovers or something simple like that. Nora particularly liked dresses with sashes that

tied behind her and give an ordinary dress a little extra oomph but not too much pizzazz, which

was a good summation of Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum’s view of life: that is to say that

life should be beautiful, full of oomph, but not be too gaudy or showy, and that was why Nora

Gabora Whalers-Rum sometimes had a problem with the house where she lived.



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The house where the Salami Whalers-Rums lived was a very old house called an

Edwardian, which made little sense to her as Edwardian refers to King Edward VII of England.

The very big, very old, very peeling-paint yellow house was built in 1911 when Edward VII was

King of England. At that time, California was part of the United States of America and its

president was Howard Taft, so Nora Gabora figured that type of house should be called a Taftian

if it had to be called anything other than a big old three-story house with a lot of rooms and

bedrooms and staircases and old windows, some of which opened and some of which did not and

some of which were cracked. There were lots of cobwebs all over the house as spiders loved the

very high ceilings. Stray cats also loved the house and lived in the basement. Mice loved the

house and lived in the walls. The old yellow house once had so many mice in the walls that Nora

could hear them scurrying about at night like they were at a mouse carnival until Daddy Dutchy

Whalers-Rum had the bright idea of releasing a rare and dangerous snake into a hole in the wall,

and since then nary a mouse nor the rare and dangerous snake had been seen.

There were many things about the house that Nora Gabora liked. For example, when you

first went through the front door, there were trapezes with soft blue mats under them in case you

fell off . On the other side of the room was a piano and some of Nora’s happiest times of her six

year-old life were when she and her sister were swinging on the trapezes while Mommy Swami

Salami sang cheerful tunes and played the piano. So that was nice.

The house sat atop a hill which protected it from earthquakes, sort of, as a hill meant the

house was built on rock and not sand dunes or ground-up oyster shells, like much of San

Francisco was, especially near Golden Gate Park and the Marina.



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The house sort of leaned to the southeast, so if you ever lost a ball or something else that

rolled, you could probably find it in the southeast corner of the house --if you lost it in the house

that is.

The house had great big windows on all four sides, and you could always have a perfect

view of the sunrise and the sunset and the moonrise and the moonset. You could also see all four

bridges from the house: the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Rafael Bridge, and the

San Mateo Bridge too, way far down south. The first two bridges you could see nearly anytime.

But the last two you could only see on really clear days with no fog, mist, or clouds, which only

happened a few times a year.

The Whalers-Rum house had a few bad points. (1) Sometimes, the wind blew right

through the cracks around the doors and windows like there were no walls or windows at all. (2)



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The walls were so eaten by termites, the house swayed in the wind or when someone stomped up

the stairs. (3) If you tried to toast a piece of bread while a space-heater or a lamp was on

anywhere else in the house, all the power went out, and then someone had to walk down the

slippery backstairs and flick all the circuit breakers, which made all the clocks blink. (4) The hot

water came out very slowly and it took an hour for the old rusty-bottomed tub to fill. (5) Water

came through parts of the ceiling inside when it rained. (6) The Whalers-Rum family didn’t own

the old Edwardian Taftian building and the mean landlord, Ms. Boogers, who did own it lived

right next door and she looked like Frankenstein wearing a football helmet even when she wasn’t

wearing any kind of headgear at all. She always wanted more and more money for rent but she

refused to fix anything because she wanted the Salami-Whalers-Rum family to move out, so then

she could fix everything finally and then sell the big old Edwardian-Taftian house for a billion

dollars.

None of Nora Gabora’s other friends lived in old dilapidated houses like that, and

sometimes Nora wished she lived in a much smaller and much newer house with much newer

furniture and a flat-screen television which had video games on it like Whoopee and FunPost.

Some of the other fathers at Nora’s school made games for Whoopee and FunPost. Some of the

other fathers designed FunPost. Some of the moms at Nora’s school worked at Goobler, where

much useful information could be found, and some of the AVS mothers worked at Cahoots,

which wasn’t as useful as Goobler but still rather handy. Nora sometimes wished for a newer

little pink house near where those families lived in the neighborhoods known as Glenn Park, Noe

Valley, Bernal Heights, and the Avenues. Nora didn’t get too very sad about her old slanting

house too much, but sometimes she thought it might be nice to have a house with heat. Their old

yellow slanting house only had little space heaters which could only be run if every other



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electrical appliance was turned completely off. Thankfully, San Francisco only got very cold a

few days a year, but on those days, in that old yellow Edwardian-Taftian house, it got so cold

that Nora Gabora could see her breath inside the house. Sometimes she wished she had a normal

house with heat that came out of vents in the floor or the walls, or maybe even a fireplace in a

grand room with very clean and polished floors like her friends had.

Other than that everything was fine. Everyone in her family was pretty weird, but she

loved them very much anyway, even her little sister Tallulah Jollineaux (a.k.a. Tally Jo), who

liked to wear pink cowgirl boots, a tutu, a monkey tail, a crown, and pee outside like a dog.



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The After-School Circus

Everything was just fine and dandy at school until Nora Gabora looked out of her first

grade classroom window and saw her mother, Mommy Swami Salami, riding a unicycle into the

school parking lot. Mommy Salami was juggling four colorful clubs and Nora’s little sister Tally

Jo was sitting on Mommy Salami’s shoulders pretending to juggle too.



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Nora had forgotten that today was the day when Mommy Salami taught circus arts for

one hour after school to all the AVS kids whose parents worked at Goobler or Cahoots or

Fudgebook or Chirp or NASA or Papaya and those kids had to stay at school until five or six at

night because their parents had to stay in those offices until rather late because they had so much

stuff to do and so many meetings to attend to make the internet and smartphones and computers

work in the very useful ways these technological things did.

The AVS kids who weren’t picked up by stay-at-home moms or dads or nannies or au

pairs got to attend an hour with Mommy Salami and her Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable

Circus School.

At times, Nora was extremely proud of her mother, who was currently tossing clubs

behind her back and under her legs while Tally Jo noodled around with two clubs that never left

either hand. “I’m juggling,” Tally Jo yelled as she pretended to juggle, “I’m juggling!” At least

her sister had on pants for a change.

Mommy Salami, wearing a sparkling blue turban, set up juggling stations and an obstacle

course. Nora liked the obstacle course best because she was very good at climbing a rope with

knots tied in it for your feet to balance on while your arms pulled you up. She was also very

good at cartwheels on the cartwheel mat which had outlines of hands where your hands were

supposed to go, and she was also very good at bear walking. Mommy Salami was so obsessed

with bear walking that one would think that she was a bear or that at least she liked walking on

her tiptoes with her hands on the ground in front of her.

The obstacle course that day was especially hard because it consisted of a ladder laying

horizontally over two barrels, and kids were not only supposed to bear walk across it, but they

were supposed to change directions, and bear walk backwards, and then at the end, they were



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supposed to twirl circles in a bear walk on the ladder. Mommy Salami said bear walking was

good for core strength, which Nora guessed meant her core would get stronger. She supposed the

core of her little six year-old body was at her middle much like a core was the middle of an

apple.

Anyway, Nora was the best at bear walk spinning, but there were a lot of other very

strong kids with very strong core strength who could bear walk spin and bear walk backwards on

a ladder too, just as there were other very strong children who could climb ropes very well and

do extraordinarily good cartwheels. Even Tally Jo was a good bear walking ladder-spinner, but

Tally Jo wasn’t very good at climbing ropes, probably because she didn’t have enough core

strength yet but she would get some with more bear walking exercises.

The juggling stations were much harder, and most kids liked to spin plates rather than

practice juggling, as juggling was a difficult skill that took lots of practice while spinning plates

was mostly holding a pointed stick with a colorful pie plate spinning on it. Some kids could wave

the stick around a bit and move the stick behind their back, but even that was much easier than

juggling. Mommy Salami made juggling look very easy, like all one had to do was pick up a

bunch of stuff and throw it up in the air all at once, but juggling was much more complicated

than that. One had to start out juggling scarves, which floated down nice and slow so you had

plenty of time to get your hands ready; then one progressed to bean-bags, then to soft padded

balls, then to heavier balls, then to bigger balls, then to clubs which looked like bowling pins,

then to big plastic rings, and then finally to flaming torches. Nora had never juggled flaming

torches, not even one, but she hoped to very soon. “I’m juggling,” Tallulah yelled while holding

one ball and doing her Tally dance which consisted of sticking out her tongue and shaking her

booty.



25

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum could do most of those things of the Surprisingly

Satisfactory Portable Circus School exceedingly well, if not perfectly. This was probably due to

the fact that Mommy Salami spun her around like a top when she was one day old and every day

after that first day as well.

Tally Jo was pretty good at all that stuff too even though she was only two years old, but

she always pretended to be falling off things when she really wasn’t, just like that moment when

she was standing on a ladder and yelling out, “Wooooh whoooooo, whoa, ohhhhh, whooooo,”

and waving her arms around like she was about to fall.

The Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable Circus School went fairly well that afternoon for a

while until the boys who liked to crash into things began to crash into each other like their bodies

were bombs. Mommy Salami had to keep the plate-spinning sticks away from them, for those

boys could turn anything into a sword or a gun and begin fighting each other. One time at lunch,

one of the crashing boys turned a wet noodle into a sword and pretended to stab another crashing

boy with it. Amazing.

The Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable Circus School went fairly well also until some of

the prissy gossipy girls who just liked to sit under the ladder and priss and gossip and say mean

things and make everyone feel badly--even though they weren’t supposed to gossip or associate

in little cliques or say mean things that made anyone feel badly — so things went well until they

started sitting under the ladder and saying mean things about the kids bear walking over them,

like, “Her shoes are weirdo,” and “His freckles are weirdo,” and things like that.

But by the time the mean prissy girls were being really mean and really prissy and the

crashing boys were crashing themselves into each other like they were torpedoes, the

Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable Circus School was nearly over.



26

A lot of the children had to stay one more hour until their parents came home from work

at Goobler or Chirp or NASA or Papaya, but Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum was done for

the day and her father, Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum had remembered to take her bike out of the

old rusted Honda’s trunk and lock it to the bike rack.

Nora Gabora loved riding her bicycle. She was almost as good at bicycle riding as she

was at rope climbing and bear walking. Her pink bicycle was a pretty normal bicycle with two

wheels, red and blue streamers from the handle bars, a white wicker basket to carry her lock and

bicycle riding gloves, and a very loud bell to warn anyone in a car where she was.

Nora assisted her mother in putting away all the Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable Circus

School things in the storage closet behind the stage. It took a while to stack up all the barrels,

ladders, tumbling mats, spinning plates, spinning plate sticks, various juggling props, and a rope.

Then Mommy Salami readied her unicycle while Tally Jo organized her three Halloween

costumes on her body and her red crash helmet on her head. Then Tally Jo scurried up her

momma’s back and sat on her shoulders like a monkey about to be blasted into space, at which

point, Mommy Salami rode off on her unicycle across the playground and onto the street.

Nora Gabora rode behind her . Nora’s helmet was purple. When Nora saw a car pulling

out or swerving into a parking space, Nora rang her very little but very loud bell. DING!!!!

The funny thing about cars not seeing them was ironic, in that almost everyone stared at

someone riding a unicycle, and almost everyone pointed at a two year-old riding on the

shoulders, of someone riding a unicycle and nearly everyone waved at the very pretty girl named

Nora riding behind them and dinging her very small but very loud bell. DING!!!!

Sometimes Nora got a bit jealous of her little sister riding atop Mommy Salami’s

shoulders, so then Nora would begin to swerve figure eights with her bicycle or stand up on the



27

pedals to show off and sometimes she even stood on the seat and stuck one leg out behind her

like she was ice skating. She couldn’t do any of those tricks around her father Dutchy Whalers-

Rum, as when he saw his daughter Nora doing spectacular tricks on her bicycle, his heart beat

very fast and he got even more nervous and sweaty than he usually was, and he even bellowed

for her to “Stop!” and “Be Safe!” which was silly because Nora always tried to do her

spectacular stunts safely and without any crashing of any sort.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum was nowhere around, however, and Nora stood on her

bicycle seat, stuck her leg out, and even waved at the crowds on the sidewalks pointing at her

family.

Teaching the Surprisingly Satisfactory Portable Circus School made Mommy Salami

very happy, plus she had just gotten paid at her other circus arts training job at Acrosports, and

Mommy Salami liked nothing more than having a good time with the money she earned teaching

circus arts, so they wheeled their unicycle and their bicycle up outside one of their favorite

restaurants, the Hard Knox Café.

Circus Arts Training and bicycle riding gave Nora a tremendous appetite so she ordered

her favorite – fried chicken with collard greens and buttery yams on the side. Tally Jo got

barbequed ribs with French fries and corn on the cob. Mommy Salami, who was a vegetarian

despite her Salami name, got the vegetable platter of collard greens, okra, yams, mashed

potatoes, grits, and hot buttered corn on the cob too. They ate hot cornbread muffins and shared a

lemonade with three straws. And when all that good food was almost all gone, the three women

shared a peach cobbler, which some said was the best in San Francisco. After one bite, Nora

thought that assessment was probably correct.



28

Then they rode home and found Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum sitting at the kitchen table

looking very forlorn and lonely in his very stained S.F.CA.U.S.A.F.M.S.CO. security guard shirt.

“Where were you girls?” he asked with a sorrowful face. “Fffpppppt.”

Then Nora pulled a takeout containers of food from behind her back and Daddy Dutchy

Whalers-Rum attacked the food like a hungry wolf and added a few more stains to his security

shirt, which used to be white. “Ah!” he grunted, “that is some good food, ffpphhhhpt.”

Tallulah Jollineaux ran off to take off her clothes and monkey dance in the living room

while Mommy Salami went to check her email on her computer.

Nora Gabora was alone with her father, so she asked, “Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum, why

is it when the beautiful Danika Dankins asks, ‘Is it science or is it magic?’ you always say it’s

magic.”

Daddy Dutchy licked a barbequed rib bone clean. “Because I don’t believe in science

very much if at all, ffpfptp.”

“Well, my teacher said science works if you believe in it or not.”

Daddy Dutchy laughed. “Magic works if you believe in it or not.”

“Well, you can prove science,” Nora argued. “We have these things called a hypothesis

and the scientific method and observations and data and conclusions.”

“Magic is harder to prove,” Dutchy Whalers-Rum agreed. “Ffffpppt.”

“Well, can you prove magic at all?”

“Open the back door, ffffptpt,” Daddy Dutchy said. “Dog, appear!”

Nora did and her annoying little dog Roy Boy ran inside. “That’s not magic,” she said.

“You didn’t make Roy appear magically because you let him out in the yard when you got

home.”



29

“Look off the back porch, fffpppttph, what do you see?”

Nora hated her father’s tricky questions because they often made no sense at all and there

was usually some tricky silly joke at the end of all his nonsense.

“Ffffftptpt, well?”

She saw the sky and Oakland’s lights twinkling like tiny stars across the Bay and the Bay

Bridge sparkling like a diamond bracelet. The view was pretty but not magic.

“Look to the south, fffpt,” Daddy Dutchy said.

Nora turned to her right, and there coming up over the horizon in the distance was a

spectacularly full moon. “The full moon is not magic.” Nora said.

Then Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum told a story he had told so many times that Nora knew

every word by heart. It was exceedingly boring.

The story went like this: the only way Nora would fall asleep as a baby would be if

Mommy Salami or Daddy Dutchy would wrap her up in a big cloth wrap and strap her to one of

their bodies and then walk for hours and hours until she fell asleep. If they stopped walking,

she’d wake up. While out on one of these very long walks along the Bay, a gigantically full

moon appeared right before them just as they were walking out on the Heron’s Head Nature

Preserve that stuck out into the Bay, and baby Nora Gabora stuck her head out of the big cloth

wrap and said, “Nora walk moon,” meaning that baby Nora thought she could walk to the moon

because it looked like the sandy path they were on led right into the full moon.

Nora Gabora knew the story. Nora Gabora was tired of the story. Nora Gabora said with

exasperation, “That story proves nothing about magic!”

“But you weren’t even talking really, ffppptpt.”



30

“I was talking in sign language, right?” Then she made all her baby sign language signs

for bird, dog, more, hungry, etc.

“And you were saying things like ‘ba’ for bird and ‘dah’ for dog, ffftpt.”

“Exactly.”

“There was no way you could speak an entire sentence at that age nor say it so clearly

either, fpfpfptt.”

“Hello, Daddy, language development in a baby is not magic. It’s science and biology

and other stuff too, like culture.”

“No it’s not, ffpfptt,” Daddy Dutchy said, making a very farty sound through his walrus

mustache. “Frrrrprpprppt!”

Nora Gabora looked at the beautiful and rather orange moon and shook her head.

“Language, f ffpttp, is magic,” Daddy Dutchy said. “The full moon is really magic, fffffpt.

Music can be magic, ffptttp.”

“You make no sense at all,” Nora Gabora said angrily and crossed her arms. “And you

have barbeque sauce and yams on your shirt that used to be white but which is now dingy and

gray.”

“Well, I love you, fffppfptpt,” Dutchy Whalers-Rum argued, “and that’s even more

magic, ffppfpfpft.”

“NO IT IS NOT!” Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum shouted as she stomped off.

Her little sister Tally Jo ran down the hallway lickety-split – thump, thump, thump,

thump---to console her.

Even though Nora was very upset with her father who didn’t believe in science, she let

him read her a bedtime story and then she read him and her little sister another bedtime story,



31

and then Mommy Salami told them all a very silly bedtime story, The Very Slippery Princess,

which they all thought was very funny, and they laughed themselves to sleep. Ha ha. Ffpffppt.



32

Green Paper Rocket Science

The next day was a day like other days. Tally Jo was dancing her tutu princess monkey

dance in the kitchen while Mommy Salami first juggled and then inserted cucumbers into their

lunch satchels. Daddy Whalers-Rum spilled espresso from his gold-rimmed, flower-imprinted

tea cup onto his formerly white security guard shirt as his daughter Nora looked over her

homework from the night before as she ate her cheese grits, sipped her persimmon tea, and tried

not to look at either her father, her mother, or her wacky crazy-dancing half-naked sister who

was currently trying to ride their ratty-looking dog around the kitchen.

As usual, Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum got jittery and very anxious right before eight

o’clock , and began yelling and huffing and puffing about being late and rushing out the door,

even though the AVS school was just about two miles away and took approximately five to ten

minutes to drive there or twenty minutes to bicycle there so there was absolutely no way they

could be late, but Daddy Dutchy never realized that and had a panic attack every day at 7:57am.

Right on time, their old rickety Honda clattered down Innes Street, tink. bink. plink. tap

tap. tump thump bump. doo wah. crazh. crash, bink tink choo and into the AVS parking lot

where Dr. Frederico was shooting green paper rockets as high as the school using an air

compressor as rocket fuel. The sound it made went Thup (then silence) Whooooooosh (that was

the rocket whoosing into the stratosphere). Then the engine for the air compressor kicked on,

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-thum.



33

Thup. Whooooooosh. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr-thum. They watched another green paper rocket

whoooosh into the sky and then land on the AVS roof, which was where most green paper

rockets landed if they made it up that high. Nora Gabora surmised that less than one-fourth of the

green paper rockets made it up that high.

“Daddy, that is science,” Nora said, “and do not even suggest that it’s not.”

“Indeed, fttttptptpt,” Dutchy Whalers-Rum said. “That is very sciencey indeed,

fffpppttffhpt.”

Thup. Whooooooosh. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr-thum.

“Green paper r ocket science,” he added. “Ffpfpfpttp.”

Nora then went inside and built her own rocket, which was very easy to do, as she had

built quite a few last year and had perfected the exact right amount of modeling clay to put into

the paper nose-cone of the paper rocket. Kids who had never built a green paper rocket had no

idea that modeling clay even went into the pointy tipped nose-cone. She sealed up the green

paper seam with a thin strip of masking tape and then pulled out the PVC pipe she had rolled the

green paper around. By that time, Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum had cut the aerodynamic fins for

the tail out of index cards, and then her green paper rocket was ready to fly. She stood patiently

in line outside.

The rockets without modeling clay in the nosecone didn’t even make it past the first story

windows. And one even broke apart and someone yelled, “Astronaut down!” as a joke.

Thup. Whooooooosh. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr-thum.

Then it was Nora Gabora’s turn.



34

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum’s rocket not only went as high as the school, her

green paper rocket went overtop the school, which was a green-paper rocket record. No green

paper rocket had ever gone completely over the school and landed on the other side.

Dr. Frederico looked at her with a slight smile as if he’d known her rocket would perform

such a feat as she was certainly one of the brightest students at AVS.

“Daddy Dutchy,” she said, “that was all science.”

“All the way up until the last part, fffppfppptt,” Dutchy Whalers-Rum said as he pointed

to the roof. “Then some magic caught hold and gave it the extra oomph right at the end, I’d say,

fffptptptpttpt.”

Nora harrumphed, which sounded like an exasperated scream, “Ugh!”

“You know, Mr. Whalers-Rum,” Dr. Frederico said gently, “that really was all science,

and I can show you the calculations and the algebraic formulas explaining the physical properties

of green paper rockets if you’ll allow me to do so.”

“Unhand me, sir!” Dutchy Whalers-Rum yelled, which didn’t make any sense because

Dr. Frederico didn’t have a hand on him. “Fffpppt,” added Dutchy.

Nora was embarrassed by her father, so she went inside to wait patiently on the floor, as

she crisscrossed apple-sauced her legs in the row where her first grade class would line up. She

had no idea why her father just couldn’t accept science was the reason and the explanation for

everything. She heard him yelling outside and just knew the earflaps of his hat were flapping

wildly. “Green paper rockets have never flown all the way over the school, never, fttttptpt!”

Nora Gabora heard Dr. Frederico mention something about low air resistance and

aerodynamics, and again Dutchy Whalers-Rum yelled, “Unhand me with your false prophesies,

kind sir! Ffffffptpht.”



35

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum felt annoyed at her father all day, so much so, that she

spoke aloud at lunch time, which presented certain problems, as AVS had silent lunches. Silent

lunches were instituted at AVS so students could concentrate on eating and savoring their

nutritious food. If someone spoke aloud during lunch, a whole series of hands in the form of the

Quiet Coyote shot up, which was exactly what Nora Gabora got when she uttered the phrase,

“Why?” aloud in regard to her annoyingly bizarre father, Dutchy Whalers-Rum, thirty-eight

quiet coyotes were starring her right in the face.

After she arrived home that night at their rickety slanting yellow house and after she did

her homework lickety-split, Nora asked her mother, “Why doesn’t Daddy Dutchy believe in

science at all?”

Mommy Salami had no good answer for that, as Daddy Dutchy also exasperated Mommy

Salami exceedingly when it came to what and why Daddy Dutchy thought about anything. Her

only answer was, “I have no idea about how or why Daddy Dutchy thinks a bout anything.” She

said this while she was practicing a new juggling trick in which balls not only bounced off the

floor as she juggled, which looked nifty, but balls also bounced off the ceiling too, which was

really nifty. Seeing balls bouncing off the ceiling and the floor threw the spectator’s perspective

out of whack and the whole world sort of turned inside out and upside down for a second. The

sound the rubber balls made on the floor and ceiling was thugnk, thugnk, thugnk, thugnk,

thugnk, and then she started juggling faster so the sound was thugnkthugnkthugnkthugnkthugnk.

Nora Gabora watched and her whole world appeared to turn upside down. Her little sister

Tally Jo Salami Whalers-Rum danced about without pants and yelled, “I’m juggling,” when she

was really only holding one ball in each hand and waving each ball about while yelling,

“WaaaaaaWaaaaaaWaaaaaaaaaa,” like she was falling off the edge of the world.



36

After Nora’s favorite dinner of noodles with sprinkle cheese and black pepper, she asked

Mommy Salami why she never did the Salami trick anymore.

“Because I’m a vegetarian now,” she said, “and I don’t eat salami anymore, and I guess

it’s just not around.”

“Did you eat the salami while doing the trick ?”

“Well, not exactly--”

“But then why can’t you do it anymore?”

“We’ll talk about it at bedtime, sweetie,” Mommy Salami said in that voice that meant

that she had had a very vexing day at work teaching the boys and girls of the city how to juggle

and tumble at Acrosports. Quite often the boys and the girls of the city who wanted to learn

circus arts completely exhausted her.

But true to her word, when Mommy Salami appeared in the sisters’ bedroom in her

flannel night turban and her flannel pajamas, she was holding a long thick salami.



37

“Mommy Salami!” Tally chanted, “Mommy Salami!”



38

“Shhhhhhh,” Mommy Salami shushed Tally Jo, and then said, as if very tired,

“Abracadabra, Allahkazam, take this salami from my hand.” Then Mommy Salami yawned and

the salami was gone.

Tally Jo clapped and cheered, but Nora asked, “Where is it?”

“Abracadabra, Allahkazam, return this salami to my hand.” Mommy Swami Salami held

out one hand, then the next, clapped them, winked at her daughters, and then the salami was back

in her hand.

“Wow,” Nora said, very impressed indeed. But then she asked, “Mommy was that

science or magic?”

“Well,” Mommy Salami said, making the salami completely disappear again, “Good

magic tricks have a healthy dose of science in them.”

“Salami, Salami!” Tally Jo chanted.

Mommy Swami clapped her hands and gave her daughters a piece of salami each.

“No, thanks,” Nora said.

“Yummy,” said Tally Jo.

“Is it really true that your magic trick used science?”

“Hmmmmm, yes,” Mommy Salami said.

“Then it’s science and not magic, right?”

“Well, how about this?” Mommy Salami said. “How about if you go to school tomorrow

and ask the most scientific scientist you know if there’s any magic in his science. How about

that? Because if you ask any magician, she’ll admit there’s a lot of science in her magic.”

“You can ask me,” Daddy Dutchy said as he came into the bedroom. “Ffflfpptptpht.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Nora said.



39

Mommy Salami laughed. “We’ll ask you if there’s any Deutsch in your Dutchy?”

“The answer is no but if so very little,” Daddy Dutchy said. “Fffpfpfptpt.”

They all gave each other kisses goodnight and read a few stories, and then Daddy Dutchy

said, “Mommy Salami, can you show me your disappearing salami trick ?”

“Absolutely not!” Mommy Salami said.

“Ack!” yelled Tally Jo, which meant, “Good Night Everyone See You in the Morning

When I’ll Do My Crazy Monkey Tutu Dance.”



40

Collecting Data

The next day Mommy Salami juggled their lunches together while Tally Jo danced

around mostly naked, eating a big chunk of salami, while Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum sloshed

his bushy walrus mustache into a tea cup of espresso and then slurped the dripping coffee from

the long hairs under his nose, all of which Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum thought to be very

gross indeed, and she couldn’t even look at him without gagging. Then they left for school in the

rattle-clink Honda a bit early because Nora Gabora said she had a project to work on, and so she

did.

After their usual very tense ten minute ride to school where Daddy Dutchy yelled at

everyone and signaled turns with his hands, Nora popped out of the rickety Honda and began her

survey, for which she was very well prepared as she had dreamt about it all night and had already

asked the dream people the very same questions she would ask the real-life people, so that when

she saw the real-life scientists and inventors and entrepreneurs, she would be exceedingly ready.

“You can go,” she told her father naturally, assuming that he’d impede her investigation. “You

can do that thing you always joke about, how some families don’t even stop the car, and the kids

just roll out of the backseat.”

“No, thank you,” Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum said. “Ffpfppptptpt, maybe I have an

investigation to investigate myself , flffffffpt.”



41

I just hope his investigation doesn’t annoy anyone, Nora thought, but then she laughed as

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum was always usually pretty darn annoying to nearly everyone.

Nora saw her first bona fide scientist, Zack Zamira, who worked for NASA and built,

launched, and maintained satellites. Zack also had a sailboat that he sometimes took his daughter

Clemira and some of the other kids out for rides around the Bay.

“Mr. Zamira,” Nora called out, “Would you say there’s any magic in your science?”

Clemira was kind of a floppy girl who wore a lot of pink and a lot of clothes with kitties

on them. She got a bit shy sometimes and kind of flopped about in a way that made her appear

smaller and smaller, which was exactly what Clemira did that day, as she flopped away until she

was almost tiny and unnoticeable.

“Mr. Zamira,” Nora pushed on, “is there any magic in your science at all?”

Mr. Zack Zamira was a strange scientist because he sometimes made the sound of a duck

for no reason at all, which was exactly the sound he made then. “Quack,” but not quack like a

person imitating a duck quacks, but his quack actually sounded like a quack a duck would quack

in authentic duck talking quack . “Quack!”

“Hmmmmmm,” said Nora, trying to decipher the quack. “Hmmmmmmmm.”

Clemira appeared beside Nora and said, “Sometimes my dad talks like a duck f or a very

long time.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s so annoying.”

“Quack,” said Zack Zamira, sounding very much like a real duck again.

Nora hugged Clemira then because she knew what it was like to have kind of a kooky

father. At least Clemira Zamira’s father was a rocket scientist and not a farmers market security

Guard which was not a very fancy job at all, although on Take-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day,



42

Nora did find being a farmers market fuard kind of fun, especially talking on walkie-talkies and

chasing kids on bicycles with billy clubs too.

Just then Nora saw Augustus and his father Germain Twappy. Augustus was problematic

for two reasons, actually maybe more than two. One was that Augustus liked to hug a lot even

when no one wanted a hug. Two was that Augustus liked to tie things up. Nora went to his house

once and everything in his entire house was tied to everything else inside the house. Yarn was

strung between the chair legs, then tied to the ceiling fan, then to the sofa legs, then through the

piano keys, and then between and through everything and there in the middle was Augustus

grinning like a wicked spider. And one time, Augustus tied up a girl on the playground with a

jump rope and left her there without telling anyone. Augustus was nearly expelled for that and

had to meet with Dr. Frederico and his parents for a very long time before he was allowed back

in AVS.

Augustus hugged Nora right away too hard and too long. She gasped for air. “Mr.

Germain Twappy, is there any magic in your science?”

Germain Twappy was a jittery fellow as he dropped off his two children at school by

bicycle, with one child attached to the front and another child attached to the back, and then he

had be on a certain corner at a certain time to catch the Goobler Bus to Silicon Valley where a lot

of the moms and dads worked. The Goobler Bus was a super long, very tall bus with tinted

windows and bicycles hanging off the back, and Daddy Dutchy yelled at the big buses whenever

he saw them because they really were a bit too big for San Francisco’s twisty narrow streets, and

when they stopped to pick up tech workers, the streets really did get backed up, and people like

Dutchy Whalers-Rum yelled at them.



43

Anyway, Germain Twappy was tall and lean like Ichabod Crane, if you know the

famously spooky story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Sometimes Germain furiously rode his

bicycle all seventy-six miles to Cupertino as if being chased by a headless horseman if he missed

the Goobler Bus.

“Mr. Twappy, sir,” Nora asked again very politely, “is there any magic in your science?”

“No,” he said, and bounded away as if chased by a headless horseman throwing flaming

pumpkins at him. Nora felt kind of badly about his abrupt answer, but then Germain Twappy

spun around. “I don’t think there’s any magic in any computer operations per se, for all that is

very mathematical and adheres to the rules of computer programming, but I would say that

maybe there is a bit of magic to how computers connect people to other people.”

Nora thought about his answer, and then asked, “Like when you get a letter in the mail

from someone?” Nora was actually thinking of the great big brillian t packages from her Nanna

Jasmin filled with candy and coloring books and very loud flashy clothing like the kind Nanna

Jasmin wore to Atlantic City.

“Yes, letters,” Germain said in a funny way, as if he couldn’t exactly remember what a

mailed letter was. “Yes, like letters but as fast as telepathy, like you didn’t even need computers

or a tablet or a phone or the internet, but you could just like read someone’s thoughts as they

thought them--” Nora thought he might say something else, but he grabbed a piece of paper from

a kid and began scribbling wildly on it.

Nora didn’t get what he was saying, because a really fast computer wasn’t magic, it was

just really fast, like a really fast car or airplane wasn’t any more magic than a slow car or

airplane. Regardless, Germain Twappy was scribbling away at inventing a telepathy machine.



44

Then Augustus tackled Nora from behind in a bear hug and nearly knocked her over.

Germain Twappy chuckled, “I would say there’s some magic between you two.”

Just then Mr. Sanjay Ananti tapped Nora’s shoulder and said in his very musical Indian

accent, “Computers may not be magic, per se, for they are machines like a toaster but the ideas

for computers or for toasters may have a bit of magic in them for we do not know where the

ideas come from and if you get a really, really good idea sometimes the idea seems to beam

down right out of the heavens especially if you are not thinking about anything particularly, per

se, then boom, you have the whole idea and can kind of see into the future and see how

everything is going to play out over the next five years. Boom! Ideas like that can be very magic

indeed and good ideas like that don’t happen often enough.”

Nora listened carefully to what Mr. Sanjay said about how ideas can be like magic, but

that didn’t mean they were magic. A cat can be like a dog sometimes --like a cat can scratch his

ear like a dog-- but that doesn’t make a cat a dog.

Hmmmmmm, she thought, then analyzed her data, and formed her hypothesis. There was

no magic. None at all. Just really fast science. And really fast science was not magic. And when

Mommy Salami hid the salami she was just using really fast science.

Nora nodded her head and jotted something down on her clipboard. The world made

sense to her now. AVS school was right. In regards to the eternal question --Is it Magic or Is it

Science?-- she would have to say that it was science that made anything happen anywhere at any

time.

Just then she saw Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum pretending to grab the nose of a junior

kindergartener who was only four. He stuck his thumb between his first two fingers and

pretended like that was her nose. And the little girl, Avani, Sanjay’s daughter, started to cry.



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Nora marched right over and explained, “That is not magic! Your nose is right there!

Your nose is still on your face! And my father only pretended to do magic! And that is his thumb

between his fingers and not your nose!”

“Gimme my nose bwack,” Avani cried, sounding very much like she had no nose.

“Pwease gimme my nose bwack!”

Dutchy Daddy leaned over and screwed his thumb into Avani’s nose and then she

stopped crying. He waved his fingers in front of his daughter’s face. “My magic made her stop

crying, tah-dah-ump, fffffpfpfpppptptpt.”

“That was not magic, Daddy,” Nora said while tapping her clipboard, “and I have proof.”

Just then Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum saw a quarter on the floor and when he bent over

to pick it up, his pants ripped. Zpppppppppppppppppppppppppppttttttt! And everyone could see

his very stained polka dotted underwear. No one could understand how a man could spill coffee

on the back of his underwear, but Daddy Dutchy had done exactly that. First one person

laughed, then everybody laughed and some kids even fell over laughing.

Just then Daddy Dutchy saw another coin and bent over to get it, because he always liked

a bargain, and then a loud Fflflflflflflflflflflflfpptpttptptptt! came out of his backside and when he

stood up another loud Fflflflflflflffpfpfppfphpt! came out of his mouth.

More children laughed, and some laughed so hard they got stitches, which meant they got

sharp pains in their sides from laughing so much. The stitches hurt so much that soon kids were

laughing and crying.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum looked pleased with himself as he announced. “I have fifty

cents!” He waved goodbye as Danika Dankin made the Quiet Coyote symbol with both hands

which really meant Quiet Down Right Now!



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Dr. Frederico then began his morning science experiment, which consisted of drilling

holes in different bottles of water. Some water shot out really far, some not at all, and Dr.

Frederico and Danika talked about air pressure. One bottle made a stream like a water pistol and

some of the kids in the first rows got wet and Danika Dankin ask ed, “Is it science or magic?”

And before anyone could answer, Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum stuck his head through an

open window from the outside and yelled, “Magic!”

All the kids yelled either “ Nooooooooooo!” or “Boooooooooooo!” but they all laughed.

Dr. Frederico looked very upset and Danika Dankin did too. And all Daddy Dutchy Whalers-

Rum had to say for himself was, “Ffffpfpfpfpfpfpfpfpfpfptpht!” He pulled his head out of the

window and ran away in a very waddling way.

His daughter hung her head, because her father was so very annoying indeed. But now

she had proof about science and magic, as she had asked actual scientists, and she began to plan

her Scientific Proof, which she would present at dinner that night, and then maybe Daddy

Dutchy Whalers-Rum would stop being so completely annoying.



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Fig Newtonian Physics

Learning at AVS was exhausting, and often Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum didn’t

feel like doing much after school except for doing her homework, drawing a few pictures, and

maybe watching a little television like Dinosaur Train or Horseland .

But sometimes Mommy Salami insisted she get out and run around a bit. The Salamis’

favorite afterschool spot was a big park on the Bay that hardly anyone went to called India Basin,

and the Salamis usually had it all to themselves, as they did that day. Tally Jo was pretty good at

soccer for only being two. She could run a very long way kicking the ball in a straight line and

even kick it into the goal, as she did that day, yelling, “Goal!”

Even though Nora Gabora didn’t feel like playing soccer after school, playing soccer

usually made her feel energized and relaxed, even if Tally Jo hogged the ball and wouldn’t let

anyone kick it as she explained her baby soccer rules in baby talk: “No! No! Dese are dey rules.

Dis iz my goal and your goal is over dere and you are on my team an I’m on Mommy Salami’s

team and we all score goals on Daddy!” Two year -old soccer has some funny rules. Nora kind of

liked the baby rules where there were three or more teams and someone could change teams

anytime, even as a goal was being scored. Then Tally Jo laid on the soccer ball so no one else

could kick it, as usual, even though Nora Gabora had on her soccer cleats and everything.

Nora didn’t mind too much. She breathed in deeply and stared off across the Bay

watching pelicans fly in a low V formation. India Basin was a beautiful place. Trees. Sea gulls.

Pigeons. Sea lions in the water. Plus, the play structure shaped like a big ship, and another play



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structure shaped like a . . . play structure, with a tunnel, sliding board, and firemen’s pole. She

felt like she had been coming here since she was one day old, as she probably had been. Despite

all the slides and swings, Nora mostly liked throwing rocks in the water or digging in the sand,

which always felt good after a long day at the brain-straining AVS.

Tally Jollineaux had followed her to the water’s edge and she was beating the water with

a bullrush, a thick reed with a bushy end. “I’m paddling, I’m paddling,” the two year-old yelled,

“I’m paddling!” Splash. Splash. Splash. Nora thought how much fun it must be to be two and

not have to make any sense at all. “ Now I’m fishing,” Tally called out.

Mommy Salami asked how school went.

“Today was Sit Anywhere Day,” Nora said, “and Yuliya Yuschenkolf crushed up against

me all day.”



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“Well, Yuliya is an only child, and she likes you very much, and she probably gets a little

lonely being alone at home all the time with no baby sister like Tally Jo around.”

“And then Augustus squashed me in from the other side all day so I was like a sandwich

all day. I hate Sit Anywhere Day. Agh!”

“Well, you’re very lucky to have so many people want to sit next to you.”

Nora thought this was probably true, but even so it was still completely annoying to be

squashed into a sandwich by Yuliya, who never stopped stalking about her stinky chickens, and

Augustus Twappy, who never stopped tying yarn to everything. Agh.

And speaking of annoying, Tally Jo was currently waving a bullrush over her head

yelling about the sharks she was catching with her fishing line, which wasn’t a fishing line at all

but completely imaginary, and Tally Jo was getting everyone all wet too. “Whooooooa

Whooooooa Whooooooooa, big shark, I catch big shark on my big fishing pole, whoooooa

whoooooa whooooooa.”

And speaking of super annoying things, just then Nora heard the annoying bicycle bell of

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum. His bicycle bell didn’t even ding like a normal bell, but rather

went Dink which actually sounded more like Clunk .

And besides that, his bicycle didn’t even much resemble a normal-looking bicycle at all,

but rather looked like a rolling bunch of suitcases on two rather wobbly wheels. He had

saddlebags on the back under the milkcrate tied to the rack. The front wheel had a big wooden

grape box tied over it. On the way to work, all the bags and baskets were empty, on the way

home, they were all filled with gifts from the farmers.



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“Gentlemen,” Daddy Dutchy said, even though he was the only gentleman – if you could

call him that. “Gentlemen, I give you the fig.” And with much fanfare, he presented them with a

carton of rather ordinary looking figs. “Ah, the magical fig,” Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum said.

“Daddy Dutchy, these are not magical figs! There is nothing magical about a f ig tree at

all, and the figs are the seeds, and if you plant one you get a new fig tree. That is all and it is all

very scientifically explained and would you stop saying that everything is magic all the time!”

“Well my dear, ffptptppfpfpfpft, please try one, ffptpt.”

They all tried a fig. Mommy Salami’s eyes opened in gastronomic surprise. “Yummy!”

Tally Jo yelled out, “Tastes like gooey candy!”

Nora bit into a fig, which did taste delightful, but even a delightful tasting fig wasn’t

magical, as the sweetness was probably an evolutionary tool to get animals like people to like

figs and therefore to have a desire to cultivate figs and therefore plant fig trees and therefore

keep figs around for a very long time indeed. That was science. That was evolution and not

magic-lution. Indeed.

Nora ate a few more figs before she protested, however, as she had to eat the figs rather

quickly, as Mommy Salami and Tally Jo Salami liked them too.

Chomp chomp chomp. Munch munch munch.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum often got a lot of goodies at the farmers markets he

guarded, and he usually came home with enough food for dinner every night. That night he

unloaded strawberries, samosas, naan, lemon pita chips, dill herb hummus, and apple cider. If

they had had a stove, they could have cooked some of the eggs or oysters he had too, if you

didn’t eat oysters raw like Daddy Dutchy did just then, as he borrowed Mommy Salami’s pocket

knife and shucked one right there and slurped it down in a very gross way. SLURP!



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The oysters were certainly jiggly and kind of gross, but everything else was spectacularly

tasty, especially Nora’s favorite, the fresh-pressed apple cider, which was cloudy and not clear

like apple juice and didn’t taste like apple juice either, but rather tasted like cold mountain air

mixed with chimney smoke and made her think of clomping horses, and she could almost smell

hay for some reason.

Nora was too busy eating to argue with her father about science and magic right then, and

besides, he was doing that thing where he kind of gazed stupidly at the horizon waiting for the

moon, as if looking for Santa Claus flying through the sky on Christmas Eve.

“Figs,” Daddy Dutchy said to his satisfied belly, “and oysters.”

Mommy Salami, Tally Jo, and Nora Gabora laid on the edge of the Bay while the waters

lapped at their feet as they felt the happiness of their filled bellies.

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum talked a lot about how great everything was like he was

talking to the sea lions sticking their heads up out of the water, and he stomped around up and

down the little sandy beach like he sometimes did when he ate a really good fig.

The cold winds that came with the setting sun in San Francisco began to blow, and the

yummy good food made Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum feel better about her day at AVS,

even if it was the dreaded Sit Anywhere Day in which Yuliya and Augustus sandwiched her like

the jelly in a PB and J. Walking into the fog r olling over San Francisco’s hills like gray dryer

lint, Nora trudged up the hill and felt that everything was right where it should be. And when

they passed Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum riding his bicycle of bags and crates and suitcases

along the road, Nora heard her father’s bicycle bell give its weird muted dink. CLUNK!



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Well Explain This . . .

At home, Nora finally had a chance to do her homework, which was mostly math. Tally

Jo stripped down to cowgirl boots, a tutu, and a crown and began dancing weirdly with a

baseball bat. When her homework was done and Nora had refreshed herself with a cold glass of

yummy farmers market organic raw milk, she was ready to make her case to her father that there

was no magic, just science, and that all magic could indeed be explained thoroughly with

science.

She found her father on the back porch waiting for the moon like he was waiting for a

cake to come out of the oven. Daddy Dutchy only wore his stained boxer shorts and his plaid

earflap hat with the woolly brim. He had a tubby belly and a very hairy chest. Even his legs were

woolly like a sheep.

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum carefully and thoroughly explained her reasoning and

even used her gathered proof and scientific evidence for famous magic tricks, like the

Submerged Milk Jug, in which Harry Houdini was locked in chains and handcuffs and thrown

into the cold sea. The trick was that he smartly hid the keys to the handcuffs and locks in his

mouth, which were passed to him by his wife who pretended to kiss him goodbye, and hiding

something in your mouth didn’t make something magic at all. She had a chart that proved that.

“Hmmmmm, fpfpt,” said Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum. “Then how does Mommy Salami

hide the salami?”



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“I have no idea,” Nora said, “but not knowing something does not make that thing which

you do not know magic.”

“Hmmmmmm, fpptt,” Daddy Dutchy said. “Did I ever tell you why I believe in magic?”

“Daddy, when I said, ‘Nora, walk, moon,” that didn’t create magic in the world! That’s

normal language development! Maybe I talked a little bit early but that’s not magic either!”

“No, the real reason, ffpppti, I believe in magic.”

“Agh!” Nora screamed.

“Sit down on the steps and wait for the moon, and I will tell you why I believe in magic,

fpfpfppfpfpt.”

“Daddy, the moon rises approximately forty-nine minutes later everyday so the moon is

probably going to rise forty-nine minutes later than it rose yesterday, agh!”

Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum sat on the stairs in his weirdly stained boxer shorts and his

woolly earflap hat and told this story: “When you were going to be born, the doctors said you

weren’t going to be born and that they were going to have to cut you out of Swami Salami. They

even had an X-ray of you stuck in the tube you were not supposed to be stuck in. You, as a tiny

little baby, weren’t in the womb at all but stuck in a tube above the womb. Fffptpt. The doctors

said it was an ectopic pregnancy and there wasn’t enough room to grow in the tube where you

were stuck and that if you did grow there you’d hurt Swami Salami very much, fpfptptp.”

Nora didn’t know where this was going, but so far she heard a lot about X-rays and

medicine, which was all science stuff.

“Fffpfpftt, so the doctors, fptptpttftp, gave us a picture of you stuck in your mommy’s

tube far from the womb. It was an X-ray or a sonogram and they said the next day they were

going to operate.” Daddy Dutchy continued in a very sad and sorrowful way. “So me and



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Mommy Salami came home and looked at your sonogram picture and lit candles and talked to

you stuck inside Mommy’s tube in there. And we said we wanted you to live and that we wanted

you to be born and come out on your own and live. Fpfpppfpt. And I rode a bus all night long

over all the hills of San Francisco, up and down and round and round the City, and I talked to

you the whole way, and I said, ffppptpttpfpf, that I wanted you to be born and not be cut out.”

He began to sob and Nora put her hand on her daddy’s very hairy back. “There there,”

she said. He was crying so hard that he forgot to finish the story. “So, what happened?”

“We went in the next day to have you cut out, ffpfpfpt,” Dutchy Whalers-Rum said, “and

the doctors took another x-ray or a sonogram to find out where you were exactly, fpfpffppt, and

you weren’t in the tube anymore.”

“Where was I?”

“You were right where you were supposed to be all along. You were inside your mother’s

womb where you would grow for seven more months and not stuck in the wrong tube at all,

ffpfpfpftp.”

“Ah . . . . so how is that magic?”

“Fpffpfpfpt, there was no way for you to get through that tube to where you were

supposed to be. You were too big. Even the doctors couldn’t explain it. One doctor said she had

never seen anything like it and another said it was a medical miracle.”

“So it was magic that got me out of the tube?”

“You can call it whatever you want, fpfpfppfpt, but there’s no scientific explanation for

you being alive other than that we, me and Mommy Salami, ffffpptt, really wanted you a lot,

fptptptt.”



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Just then the rim of the big white moon poked its head over Oakland like it was playing

hide-and-seek with the world.

“If there’s no logical scientific explanation for you, ffpfppfpft, there’s pretty much no

logical scientific explanation for anything, fpfpft.”

Nora could think of a hundred scientific explanations straight away. Mommy Salami’s x-

rays got mixed up with someone else’s, maybe. Or maybe she really did squeeze through the

tube somehow and got to be where she needed to be. Something like that, right?

The moon had moved up higher so that it looked like it was laughing specifically at them.

“Ah, you found me again, moon, fpfpfpfpt,” Daddy Dutchy Whalers-Rum said, like he was

surprised.

Nora Gabora Salami Whalers-Rum wrapped one of her six year-old arms around her very

hairy, very strange, kind of tubby daddy and hugged him. If he wanted to think that she was a

little bit magic, so be it. Who was she to argue? Especially if he got so upset about it. She

squeezed him and hugged him.

Tally Jo peeked her head out the window and said, “Ack!”

Maybe Nora’s sister was a little magic too. And she watched her father stare at the moon

as if he had never seen a moon so big and so bright before. The air smelled like fresh-pressed

cider and when she breathed, the air tasted slightly of figs, and she could almost hear clomping

horses.

fin



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the salamis in "science vs. magic" (a mostly true story)

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