Chapter 8

8

When Abraham Lincoln Panim was enrolled in nursery school, he had a very tough time being with the other children, who often taunted him about the way he looked.

One little boy called him “Eddie Munster,” and the name stuck with the young boy, so much so that most of the children in school knew him by the name “Eddie Munster” more than they knew him as “Abraham Lincoln Panim.”

One day, when he was in nursery school, and with his mom back at work, Mrs. Panim received a phone call from Mrs. Stottle. She excused herself from her class for a moment to take the call.

“Mrs. Panim, I have to get your son from nursery school,” Mrs. Stottle told Mrs. Panim. “Something … happened there … I don’t know much about it, other than he is OK … .”

Mrs. Panim face showed concern, “What happened?” she asked Mrs. Stottle. “What happened?”

“Let me go get him and I will let you know,” said Mrs. Stottle, who said goodbye before Mrs. Panim could say another word.

Mrs. Panim called the school office, they sent another teacher up to watch her class, and she herself made a bee line to her son’s nursery school.

When she got there, and ran into the school, she saw Mrs. Stottle already there, on her hands and knees, with her big feet sticking out as they always did, and as she got closer, she saw that the older woman was attending to her son. The nursery school teacher was also there, trying to calm down the howling little boy.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Panim,” said the nursery school teacher, who appeared to be holding back a snicker as she spoke. “Your son got … well … he was …  .“

“This is an abomination,” Mrs., Stottle yelled, as Mrs. Panim now fully saw her son, fully covered in yellow goo.

“ … one of the other students brought in a jar of Cheez Whiz, and squirted the stuff all over your son,” said the teacher, again holding back a snicker as the other students were laughing on the other side of the room.

“ … we all know he hates cheese, and the kids think he … well … he looks a lot like ‘Eddie Munster’ … so they squirted him with the cheese,” said the teacher, who left Abraham Lincoln Panim with his mother and Mrs. Stottle as she walked over to the other side of the room with the other children.

“ABRAHAM LINCOLN PANIM IS A RAT! ABRAHAM LINCOLN PANIM IS A RAT!” the children yelled over and over again in unison, delighting at the sight of the Cheez Whiz-covered boy.

One little boy, named Brandon Hartung, held the nearly empty bottle of Cheez Whiz over his head in joy as the taunts got louder and louder. He held it over his head with his left hand, as his right hand was covered with a glove.

When the teacher went over to the other students, she tried to calm them down. “Now class, that is not fair,” she said. “What you did was … what you did was—“

And then she started to laugh herself, not being able to hold in her snicker any longer.

Mrs., Panim and Mrs. Stottle carried out the still Cheez Whiz-covered boy, and the taunts got even louder and louder.

And the nursery school teacher’s laughing got louder and louder too.

That was the last time Abraham Lincoln Panim attended a school of any kind during his young life.

But he still continued to hear Mrs. Stottle say over and over, “Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.”