Marvin came home late in the afternoon. He was tired from playing hard, but still very excited. He walked through the gate, past the red post. Suddenly, he remembered.
“Shoes,” he said aloud.
He felt awful. It seemed as if he was always forgetting something. He sighed. He knew his mom would be mad. She had planned to leave work early just so she could take him shopping.
Maybe she forgot, too, he thought. He hoped.
Linzy, his little sister, met him at the door. “You better hide,” she warned.
Marvin slowly stepped inside.
His mother was standing by the stairs. Her hands were on her hips. “So nice of you to come home,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Marvin.
“Sorry?” asked his mother. “Is that it?”
Marvin didn’t know what else he could say. “I forgot,” he said. “You won’t believe what happened at school today!”
“What was the last thing I said to you before you left this morning?” his mother asked.
Marvin sighed. “You said to come straight home so we could go shopping for shoes. But—”
“I left work early so that I would be able to take you,” said his mother. “I had to rearrange my whole work schedule.”
Marvin’s father came down the stairs. “Don’t you ever think about others?” he asked.
It was two against one.
“Linzy, Jacob, and your mother sat around waiting for you,” his father said. “Don’t you think they had better things to do?”
“I’m sorry,” Marvin said again. “I forgot all about it. But you won’t—”
“We finally left without you,” said his mother. “Now I’m going to have to take you to the store tomorrow. Which means rearranging my work schedule again.”
“I can wear my old shoes,” Marvin offered.
“Maybe you should just go barefoot to your cousin’s bar mitzvah,” said his father. “Maybe that will help you learn.”
“Can I go barefoot, too?” asked Jacob. He smiled at Marvin.
Their parents didn’t think that was funny.
“Do you know what time it is?” his mother asked him.
“No.”
“It’s almost six o’clock,” said his father.
“Six o’clock?” asked Marvin. “Quick, turn on the TV!”
His parents stared at him. His mother raised her eyebrows. “There will be no television for you,” said his father. “Not for a week. Maybe then you won’t forget so much. Maybe television is destroying your brain.”
“It’s not regular television,” Marvin tried to explain. “The—”
“No TV!” shouted his mother.
“You care more about television than you do about your own family,” accused his father.
“I don’t,” said Marvin. “But you have to watch—”
“We don’t have to watch anything!” his mother interrupted. “Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it. If you keep it up, there will be no TV for a month. You may go to your room and get started on your homework.”
Marvin didn’t know what to do. His parents wouldn’t listen to him. They thought he was a selfish, rotten TV mush-brain. He slowly started up the stairs.
Linzy caught up to him. “You want to see my new shoes, Marvin? They’re really pretty. They have bows and buttons.”
Marvin tried to smile.
Down below, in the family room, Marvin’s father turned on the news. Marvin heard Clark Rogers’s voice coming from the television.
“The president went looking for good citizens today. And he found them at Dogwood Elementary School.”
Marvin stopped.
“Hey, Marvin, that’s your school!” Jacob shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s Marvin!” exclaimed Marvin’s father.
“I want to see!” said Linzy. She ran down the stairs.
Marvin stepped down a couple of steps and leaned way over the banister. He saw himself on TV adding the big numbers. Then he saw the president talking to his class.
“America is not just a place on a map. America is made up of all of its citizens. If we want America to be a great country, it is up to every single one of us—me, you, Mr. McCabe, Mrs. North, Marvin—to be good citizens.”
“Did he mean you, Marvin?” asked Jacob.
“Shh!” said Marvin’s mother.
“The students in Mrs. North’s third-grade class had lots of ideas about what it means to be a good citizen,” said Clark Rogers.
Marvin saw Casey Happleton on the television.
“Help people who need help.”
“There’s Nick,” said Jacob.
“Don’t fight.”
“And Stuart,” said Marvin’s mother.
“If you, uh, see a fire or something, you should put it out.”
“The students also had lots of interesting and unusual questions for the president,” said Clark Rogers.
Marvin heard Kenny ask, “Do you ever mess up? You know, make mistakes?” He hoped his parents listened to the president’s answer.
“Of course. Everybody makes mistakes. And when you’re president, you can really mess up big time. But if you’re smart, you learn from your mistakes. And you should try to be understanding and forgive other people when they make mistakes.”
Marvin nearly fell over the banister, but caught himself.
“The children in Mrs. North’s class were very impressed with their visitor, and I think the president was very impressed with the children,” said Clark Rogers.
“There’s Marvin!” screamed Linzy.
Marvin strained to look.
“Is there something we should be doing now if we want to be president someday?”
“I think you’re already doing it, Marvin. Work hard. Listen to your teacher. Be a good citizen. All those things we talked about earlier. If you do that, then any one of you—Casey, Travis, Nick, Patsy—might be president someday.
“Take a good look at this bright young man here. You may be looking at a future president.”
Marvin’s parents looked at Marvin, first on TV, then on the stairs.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.