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Nick’s New Word

Nick was good at wondering,
and one day he wondered where all the words in the dictionary came from.
So he asked Mrs. Granger, his Engish teacher.
And she said, “People made them up.
When people need new words,
they make up new ones or put pieces of old words together new ways.
Then if enough people use a new word long enough,
it ends up in the dictionary.”

That answer got Nick thinking, which is different from wondering.
Whenever Nick stopped wondering and started thinking,
things happened.

The next afternoon Nick walked into the Penny Pantry
and asked the lady behind the counter for a frindle.
Frindle was Nick’s new word.
She squinted at him. “A what?”
“A frindle, please. A black one.”
She leaned over closer and tilted one ear toward him. “You want what?”
“A frindle,” and this time Nick pointed at the ballpoint pens behind her on the shelf.
“A black one, please.”
She handed Nick the pen,
he handed her the 49¢, said, “Thank you,” and left the store.

Six days later Jake stood at the counter of the Penny Pantry.
He was the fifth kid that Nick had sent there to ask for a frindle.
And when he did, the lady reached right for the pens, and asked, “Blue or black?”

Nick was standing one aisle away at the candy racks, and he was grinning.
Frindle was a real word. His plan would work.

Jake, John, Dave, Chris, and Travis.
Five kids, five secret agents.
Nick made them all swear the oath.
From this day on and forever,
I will never use the word PEN again.
Instead, I will use the word FRINDLE,
and I will do everything possible so others will too.
And each boy signed the oath with Nick’s frindle.
The rest, of course, is history.
Here’s what happened.

School was the next battleground, and the first skirmish went like this.
Nick raised his hand during English class and said, “Mrs. Granger, I forgot my frindle.”
Then John, sitting three rows away, blurted out, “I have an extra one you can borrow.”
Then John made a big show of rooting through his backpack looking for something.
“I think I have an extra one, I mean, I told my mom to get me three or four. I’m sure I had an extra one in here yesterday, but I must have taken it...Wait, ...yeah, here it is.”
And then John made a big show of throwing it over to Nick,
and NIck missed it on purpose, and then make a big show of finding it.
They nearly had to stay after school for making such a scene,
but Mrs. Granger and every kid in the class got the message loud and clear.
That black plastic thing that Nick borrowed from John had a funny name...
a different name...a new name—Frindle.

Some of the teachers tried to fight it,
but kids talk more than teachers,
and they liked Nick’s new word.
A lot.

On the day of the class picture,
Nick and his secret agents whispered something into everyone’s ear.
And when the photographer said, “Say ‘CHEEESE!’”, no one did.
Every kid said “FRINDLE!” instead, and held one up so the camera could see it.
In just one month,
every kid at Lincoln Elementary School was writing with a frindle.

But not Mrs. Granger.
She made an announcement, and posted a notice.
Anyone who calls a pen a frindle
will stay after school and write this sentence 100 times:
“I am writing this punishment with a pen.”
But that just made everyone want to use Nick’s new word even more.
Staying after school with “The Lone Granger” became a badge of honor.

One day Nick and every kid in the fifth grade
asked Mrs. Granger if she had an extra frindle.
And almost 70 kids stayed after school.
They filled her room and spilled out into the hallway.
The principal had to stay after school to help Mrs. Granger,
and they had to arrange a special bus to get all the kids home.

And the next day, all the fifth graders did it again,
and so did half of the kids in the rest of the school,
over a hundred and fifty kids.
Parents called to complain,
and then the School Board got involved.

And then there was a story about Nick’s new word in the local papers.
And when the reporter talked to Mrs. Granger,
she said, “I give up. I tried to fight it,
but a word is hard thing to stop.

Once it was written about in the paper,
all the kids at the junior high
and all the kids at the high school started using Nick’s new word.
Then all the stores in town
started advertising frindles.

Finally a TV reporter heard about Nick’s new word and interviewed him.
And millions of kids heard about Nick’s new word.
And they liked it.

Like I said, the rest is history.
And one day, when Nick was 35 years old,
he bought a new dictionary.
And he opened it up to page 541,
and right before the word fringe he read this:
frin•dle (frin‘ dl). n. 1. an implement used to make permanent marks on a writing material. (arbitrary coinage by Nicholas Rogers) see pen

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