One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy by Stephen Tunney Page B

landed in a pool of mud — and if an aristocratic Loopie could even be imagined, complete with an aristocratic sense of naïve ragtag splendidness, it was Bruegel.
    He failed every subject, every year.
    He was very, very easily distracted.
    He often exploded into remarkable bouts of enthusiasm for things or ideas in direct contradiction to the teacher’s plans.
    Some teachers thought he was a lousy student but a brilliant and likable fellow nevertheless — other teachers thought he was just the worst thing to ever walk into their classrooms. The girls could never decide if he was handsome or horrible.
    Hieronymus liked him immediately.
    Every time Bruegel walked into a classroom, the room became smaller, and his voice, naturally several decibels above the din, dominated all sound. He was constantly being told to
shut up!
or to
lower the volume of your noisy trap!
but it failed to register. In the world of the Loopies, Bruegel and his way of speaking transformed whatever classroom he entered into a tempest of cacophony — with himself at the center.
    “Hieronymus!” he shouted across the crowded room. Bruegel was the lone member of the Loopies who never called the One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy "Mus.” He found shortened names to be somewhat beneath him. “Hieronymus, you would not believe what happened to me today on my way to this den of un-learning…”
    “Bruegel!” shouted the exasperated teacher, already overwhelmed by the waves of noisy disrespect.
    Non-plussed, Bruegel continued.
    “A woman came up to me on the subway — I think she was from some kind of religious organization. She rang a bell and she wore this really bizarre hat and she wanted me to give her money. She waved a book at me.”
    “Bruegel!” the teacher shouted.
    “She was good looking, but too old for me — and she was really weird. She was talking about Jesus and Pixie.”
    The teacher, whose name was Mr. Flustegelin, who had only been with the class for two weeks, and who was already completely burnt out and close to quitting, shouted at Bruegel again.
    “Bruegel, you are late and you are disrupting this class!”
    This was both true and untrue. Bruegel was indeed incredibly loud. And if the teacher had been successful in controlling the class, the accusation that Bruegel was disrupting the class would have certainly been a legitimate complaint. However, as the noise level had already crossed the acceptable limit before Bruegel’s arrival, it appeared the teacher was picking on him unfairly. And most likely because Bruegel never attacked teachers — he was a safe reprimand.
    “My dear sir!” Bruegel shouted. He never bothered to learn any of the names of the teachers — he only addressed them as my dear sir or my dear madam, and because he was aware of his own limitations in vocabulary, he often made up words to make himself sound smarter than he thought he was. “Your quadrangulations on the vobis articulations exiting from my oral sector are most excrustinghating! I am not the solitary sens-being-boy in this room who is a torrent-builder of volume! I suggest you punish my classmates first before you rally your aquizations and stolligahazen against me!”
    The class roared. Some students felt the teacher unfairly did not notice their own uncontrolled contributions to the general din of noise. Bruegel’s pseudo talk only acted as a type of volume switch for everybody, suddenly shifting the cacophony into an upward direction.
    “Bruegel, you are the loudest in this room!”
    Bruegel ignored the teacher, and before he could continue shouting across the room to Hieronymus about his inane encounter that morning on the subway, he turned to a girl named Clellen, who sat a couple of meters away from him. His voice was just as loud as it had been when speaking to Hieronymus.
    “Clellen, did you watch
Sweaty Servants
last night? I thought the girl who played Roxanne looked just like you.”
    “Shut up, Bruegel!” Clellen shouted,