ness of it in your nose. If youre the good boy for that day and you
answer the questions he gives it to you and lets you eat it there at your
desk so that you can eat it in peace with no one to bother you the way
they would if you took it into the yard. Then theyd torment you,
Gimme a piece, gimme a piece, and youd be lucky to have an inch left
for yourself.
There are days when the questions are too hard and he torments
us by dropping the apple peel into the wastebasket.Then he borrows a
boy from another class to take the wastebasket down to the furnace to
burn papers and apple peel or hell leave it for the charwoman, Nellie
Ahearn, to take it all away in her big canvas sack.Wed like to ask Nel-
lie to keep the peel for us before the rats get it but shes weary from
cleaning the whole school by herself and she snaps at us, I have other
things to be doin with me life besides watchin a scabby bunch rootin
around for the skin of an apple. Go way.
He peels the apple slowly. He looks around the room with the lit-
tle smile. He teases us, Do you think, boys, I should give this to the
pigeons on the windowsill? We say, No, sir, pigeons dont eat apples.
Paddy Clohessy calls out, Twill give them the runs, sir, and well have
it on our heads abroad in the yard.
Clohessy,you are an omadhaun.Do you know what an omadhaun is?
I dont, sir.
Its the Irish, Clohessy, your native tongue, Clohessy. An omadhaun
is a fool, Clohessy.You are an omadhaun.What is he, boys?
An omadhaun, sir.
Clohessy says, Thats what Mr. ODea called me, sir, a diddering
omadhaun.
He pauses in his peeling to ask us questions about everything in the
world and the boy with the best answers wins. Hands up, he says, who
is the President of the United States of America?
Every hand in the class goes up and were all disgusted when he asks
a question that any omadhaun would know.We call out, Roosevelt.
Then he says,You,Mulcahy,who stood at the foot of the cross when
Our Lord was crucified?
Mulcahy is slow.The Twelve Apostles, sir.
Mulcahy, what is the Irish word for fool?
Omadhaun, sir.
And what are you, Mulcahy?
An omadhaun, sir.
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