Carmex Man

Carmex Man



         Ok so my name is Tyler.  I’m a sophomore at New Berlin High School.  School, well, it’s boring to say the least.  I understand it all.  Math, English, Science, History, I get it.  Well, except maybe Spanish, but that’s a whole different language.  But with all the other classes, I don’t need all the examples and remedial assignments.  Now don’t get the impression that I think that I’m better than everyone else, because I’m not.  It’s just that I understand stuff pretty quick so I get distracted in school.  There are a couple of ways to fight this distraction.  You can always talk with friends until teachers tell you to shut up, flirting with your girlfriend is a great way to pass a class, sleeping is an option popular with the late night partygoers, you can stare off into space and completely zone out, but with this you run the risk of drooling.  However, my favorite way to pass an hour of notes and lectures is with my imagination and a little thing that I carry around for chapped lips.  This little entertainment object is called Carmex, available at all major retailers in the skin care aisle.  How could this keep me entertained? Well, let me tell you.



         It all started one day in math class.  I was bored.  Who doesn’t get bored in math class when you are doing 30 examples for something you learned in 7th grade?  But what could I do to offset my boredom?  The teacher had learned her lesson; I was well isolated from all my friends.  In fact, we occupied the four different corners in the room.  Could I talk to my girlfriend?  Nope, she wasn’t in this class and even if she was, the teacher would never let us sit close together.  It was first hour, sleeping was an option, but if I fell asleep, a detention was a very real thing in my future.  And I had already been zoning out for the past 10 minutes, it was doing nothing to help pass the time.  I’m pretty sure it was slowing down time.  I was in a dilemma.  Something had to be found or else I ran the risk of being 100% completely bored.  I frantically searched my pockets for something, anything, that I could use to fight back the mind numbing boredom.  A piece of lint, a note with the name of a youtube video to look up, 27 cents in change, and then I found it.  It was the ticket to passing the time and keeping me in a state of amusement.  My trusty tube of Carmex.  As my fingers closed around it and retrieved it from my pocket, I already knew it was what I had been praying for.  For you see, I wasn’t just holding something that helped heal chapped lips.  I was holding Carmex Man, the greatest defender of the classroom.  He fights pencils, notebooks, markers, anything that poses a threat.  But his greatest foe is boredom, an enemy that luckily, he has always been able to defeat.  As the teacher droned on and on about variables and what not, I started to move Carmex Man around with my hand.  He leapt and flew around my desk all by himself until my neighbor in the class saw what I was doing and tossed over her Strawberry flavored Carmex.  I gave her a nod and then started to have the Strawberry Carmex, called Berry, fly around with Carmex Man.  Berry had a crush on Carmex Man and was extremely glad to see him.  As they danced on my desk and fought a mechanical pencil together, I gradually faded out of math class and into the world that was taking place on my desk.  I wasn’t Tyler anymore in my mind.  I was Carmex Man.



         I could fly, that was the first thing I did as soon as I came out of the dark, cramped place that I had come from.  I came out of that confinement into a much larger, brighter place.  There were huge things around me.  Things that I couldn’t place in my mind or memory.  They moved a hole near the top of their bodies, if that’s what their strange shapes were called, and noise came out.  It was nothing but nonsense coming out in a dull roar from these monstrous beings.  They also seemed to be holding little sticks that they were dragging around a white surface that was different from the hard, tan and brown material that I was on.  Well, all except the giant thing that was closest to me.  He, well I am just guessing that he is a male form of the things, seemed to be staring at me and having the two large things hanging from his side follow me around.  I was nervous at first when I saw this, but it didn’t appear to me that he meant me harm.  In fact, in a weird way, I kind of felt like he was helping me.  But back to the flying I was talking about.  I leapt up off the ground and rose faster and faster.  While I was up there, I could see that there were a lot of the beings.  And they all seemed to be sitting at islands of the surface I had just left.  Around all the islands was a gray terrain that stretched all the way to the edge of the world.  There, they ran into what looked like a white covering that surrounded everything, it was even above us.  I could see the whole world.  Then, before I could see anything else, I went crashing back done to the ground.  Hmm, I guess I could fly, but not for long.  What other talents did I have?  Before I could try anything else though, the giant grabbed me with the things hanging from his side, and suddenly I had a word for them.  I knew what they were.  They are called hands.  I don’t know how I knew that, it just came to me.  With his hands, the giant screwed off my red helmet and then squeezed me.  Without any consent given, a sticky gel shot out of me and landed on one of the sticks I saw the other giants dragging around.  And just like with the giant’s hands, I suddenly had a name for these things.  They were pencils, and just as I knew that, I knew that they were bad news and I was meant to fight them.  So that’s what I did. The pencil startled by my sneak attack of ooze, lunged at me.  But I had my helmet back on and I flew straight up in the air to miss its attack.  Then while the stupid pencil swung around looking for me, I flipped over in the air and propelled myself down.  Bulls-eye!  I hit him right on his pink little head and he collapsed to the ground.  I’ve won.  Just like that.  I had beaten him without even thinking about it, almost as if I was being controlled.  And that’s when I knew that the feeling I first had about my giant was right.  He wasn’t trying to hurt me, he was there to help and assist me in my fight against evil.  With this new found knowledge, I once again turned to gaze upon the island that I was on.  And that’s when I saw her.  With the sight of her, a memory came rushing back to me.  I had been in a giant place; it was called Walgreen’s.  There had been many people like me there.  And that’s where I had met the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.  Her name was Berry, and we had hit it off right away.  She adored me and I was happy to return the attention.  But then one day, she was gone.  I went into a state of despair.  In my cloudy and depressed mood I hardly noticed when I was picked up and taken away.  The next thing I knew, I was here.  And she was there.  Berry, my sweet, had been brought back to me.  She saw me too and came gliding over.  I was overjoyed.  Now I had defeated the first of what I knew would be many pencils, had a friendly giant thing on my side, and now had a partner to explore this new world with.  But our reunion was short lived for just as we started to talk and to remember, another pencil came at us.  This pencil was different.  It wasn’t yellow and pink, it didn’t seem natural.  It was more like a robot, or something mechanical, but I still knew it was a pencil.  Berry was just as instinctive a fighter as I was and I knew why.  The giant was with us.  He wanted us to win and to be together.  So when the robot pencil shot a thin gray stick at us, Berry and I both flew up and out of the way at the same time.  As we spiraled around the pencil, confusing it, Berry flew down behind it while I dove right at it.  The mechanical fighter was pushed back over Berry and fell over the edge of the island, all the way down to the land far below.  As we gazed over the precipice at the robot pencil lying far below, a piercing sound rang through the whole world.  It wasn’t made by any of the giant beings; in fact, it seemed to cause more activity by them.  The next thing I knew, Berry and I were snatched up and shoved back down into the confining space I had come from.



         Was that the bell?  It must have been, all of my classmates are getting up and heading for the door.  Wow, Carmex Man worked better than I ever could have imagined.  I had just passed a whole math class without a glance at the clock or even listening to the lesson.  I grab up the two tubes of Carmex from my desk and after getting the approval of the girl who gave me the Strawberry Carmex, I shove them both into my pocket for more adventures.  Then I jot down my assignment and grab my books and head for the door.  I almost make it before the teacher calls me back.  She wants to talk about my note taking abilities.  I try to explain to her that I copied down some examples and that I understood the work.  She must have been feeling sympathetic because she told me that it was okay for me to play with Carmex Man during notes, as long as I kept it quiet and continued to get good grades.  And as I turned and opened the door, she added that she couldn’t wait to hear about the next adventure of Carmex Man and Berry.  And to be honest, neither could I.  A quick stop at my locker to switch books and then I’m off for my next class.  Chemistry, a favorite sleeping hour for many kids, would be the next place I would get to experience the adventures that lay in a world inhabited by lip care products and evil pencils.  And for the first time in my high school career, I couldn’t wait to get to a science class. 



         Ugh, I hate this gloomy cage I keep getting shoved into, but at least this time I have Berry with me and we are very close.  I am under the impression that we are in a part of the giant, but I have no idea what part.  All I know is that we seem to be floating up in the air and moving forward.  The noise level is unbelievable.  There are voices everywhere.  I can’t understand any of it, but the sheer amount of it is almost frightening.  With all of the movement, I feel my body start to squirm.  All of a sudden I can see light above me.  I must be close to the opening of our moving cage.  And then with one last wiggle, I’m up above the lip of our confinement and I start to peer at the surroundings.  They are overwhelming and disorienting.  We must have exited the world with the tan islands and gray floors, for now we are in a long narrow place that extends as far as my limited gaze can see.  Its terrain is multicolored and the walls are orange part of the way up and then they turn to white again.  But the weird thing is that the orange parts seem to open and I can see things being taken out of them.  And then I recognize what is being brought out of the orange containers.  It is pencils, hundreds of them, and with them are notebooks, and papers, and all kinds of formidable enemies.  The containers are storage for my enemies, either that, or they are wormholes to this world that they come through to fight me.  And the sheer number of giants is unimaginable.  They are packed in, touching one another, and moving in opposite directions.  I slide back into the darkness before I completely overload my senses.  As I describe all that I saw to Berry, she utters a little moan.  To her, the number of enemies seems insurmountable; unfortunately I feel much the same way.  But then I remember our friendly giant and I look at my beautiful Berry and I know that somehow we will find a way to be victorious. 



         I hate the hallways.  Everyone is packed in, pushing and shoving.  You can’t talk over all the noise and the smell is far from pleasant.  Oh well, it’s a part of high school.  I nod to a couple of friends and then duck into the door for my next class.  Finally, I have some space to spread my arms and walk faster than in the hallways.  Too bad it’s also freezing cold in here.  It’s 46 degrees outside, so logically my teacher has all the windows open.  Oh, and the school waits until mid-November to turn off the air conditioning and to turn on the heat in the parts of the school that have it, so seeing as it’s only October, the air conditioning is on full blast too.  I feel like I’m in the Arctic, or at least somewhere much farther north than central Illinois.  I contemplate going to my locker for a flimsy sweatshirt which wouldn’t do anything against this polar wind, but I decide that I don’t want to be tardy so I’ll just tough it out.  I head off to my seat in the very back, which I thought would be good for not paying attention, but today it will just speed up the frostbite that will be taking over my body.  Luckily, my girlfriend sits right in front of me, and as the bell rings and I take out Carmex Man and Berry, she turns around and starts to tell me all about the adventures of a surprise quiz first hour.  Then she sees me holding the two tubes of Carmex, and she asks me how bad my lips are chapped if I need that much.  I tell her that it’s not for my lips, it’s for my entertainment.  She asks what I mean and I sheepishly tell her about what I did all during first hour.  After I finish a rather hurried and quiet summary of Carmex Man and Berry, I wait to see how she reacts.  I’m expecting her to laugh, turn around, shake her head, and denounce the fact that she even knows me let alone dates me.  Instead she just says cool and asks if she can play with them too.  I smile; this is why I’m dating her.  I hand her Berry and tell her in a little more detail how they are in love and they are fighting pencils, notebooks, planners, and boredom together.  I let her know that they can fly, can shoot sticky goop if you take their helmets off, and that they both know all kinds of martial arts and are ingenious fighters.  She nods, in full understanding, and as the teacher starts to put our notes on the overhead we both fade into the adventures of Carmex Man and Berry.



         An eternity seems to have passed since Berry and I have been shoved into the darkness, but I know it can’t be much longer than ten minutes.  Then finally I hear the same sound that made all the giants get up and move, although it was a little muffled through the walls of our chamber.  I’m hoping that this means that we will be brought back out into the light soon.  As I wait expectantly to be brought up out of my dark confinement, the time seems to pass even slower.  At least another seven or eight minutes go by before I feel the now almost familiar warmth of the giant’s hand enclose me.  I rejoice as I get into the bright world again.  Then as I start to look around, I realize that it is a different world than the one with the brown islands.  This one has many more islands and they are all metallic gray.  Another thing is the temperature.  This must be an arctic world because I can feel the goo inside me start to solidify and move sluggishly.  The noise that moves the giants must open some kind of wormhole that moves them in between universes.  But some of the giants in here weren’t in the last world. Then I realize someone else that isn’t there.  Berry is missing.  She’s not in my giant’s other hand.  As I frantically search for her, I relax when I spot her in the hand of a female giant next to us.  I am still nervous for Berry, but then I realize that my giant wouldn’t entrust Berry to someone that wouldn’t protect her.  The giants, at least some of them, are here to help me on my mission.  And I have a strange gut feeling that in some way I am helping my giant too.  Now that I have located Berry and become acquainted with my new surroundings, I only have one worry.  Hopefully, Berry and I will be just as good at fighting the pencils and other things when we are separated as we were when the same giant held us.  I am pretty confident that our connection to each other will still let us be able to know what the other is going to do.  And as I see Berry fly up and look over my shoulder, I come to the conclusion that our connection is going to be tested right away.  Without even thinking, thank you friendly giant, I explode upwards and out of the way of the missile that was shot at me by the mechanical pencil.  As I cart wheel through the air I catch a glimpse of our attackers.  It is two robot pencils and a spiral notebook.  The notebook looks huge compared to what Berry and I had been fighting.  This will be a real test.  Back on the ground now I can see just how much bigger the notebook is than us.  Looking at it just makes me feel sick so right now I’m going to focus on the much smaller pencils.  Moving in sync, Berry and I launch ourselves at the slender wrong doers and send them flying.  They collapse to the ground; the gray bones that they shoot out are broken.  That was easy enough.  Now it’s time to turn to the very large notebook that is towering over us.  Berry spins and hits it.  Nothing.  There is absolutely no response.  Then the notebook swings open its front and sends a gust of wind shooting out.  Berry and I fly backwards and almost over the edge of the island.  As we teeter on the edge, we are saved by the hands of our giants.  My giant starts to unscrew my helmet.  I wonder what my goo could do against a huge notebook like the one we are facing.  Then I understand.  If I can get some on his white insides, he won’t be able to swing open like he just did and send us flying backwards.  With this knowledge, I catapult up and start to spray goo at this mammoth.  There’s just one problem.  Before I can get any to stick on him, he swings wide open again and knocks me to the hard ground.  Ouch, I didn’t expect that.  I’m Carmex Man for Pete’s sake.  Then I realize that it’s about to get worse.  The notebook has decided that with me lying on the ground with my helmet off now would be a good time to fall on me and pretty much crush me.  So that’s what he does.  A gigantic ton falls on me.  Goo shoots out of me.  I can’t move.  This is not fun at all.  As my discomfort rises I see Berry out of the corner of my eye.  She is struggling in vain to push this beast off of me.  She is having little success, but she is moving him fraction by tiny fraction.  A centimeter, then another, an inch, all I need is a little more room to struggle free.  Then all of a sudden I pop out.  Berry did it.  While the notebook is wondering where its captive disappeared too I join Berry and continue to push it.  Now with both of us working, the mammoth has no chance.  It slides closer and closer to the edge before finally, it topples over.  Berry and I turn to each other, exhausted.  Then I hear it, the noise that beckons the giants to leave the world.  I know what is coming next.  So it is no surprise to me when Berry and I are swept up by the giant’s hand and deposited into the dark pocket. 

         

85 minutes gone in a flash.  I love Carmex Man.  And so does my girlfriend.  When the bell rings, she hands me Berry and says how much fun that was.  According to her, I am a little immature but only I would have the imagination to think of something like this.  I take that as a compliment as I’m pretty sure she meant me to.  The latest adventures of Carmex Man and Berry were so thrilling that they even kept me from noticing how mind-numbingly cold it is in this anti-fun/pro-notes environment.  As I join the line that is shuffling out of this classroom and out into the sardine can that we call a hallway I think back to this morning before I knew Carmex Man.  A mere three hours ago I had no way to get through school without a heavy dose of boredom.  Now I’m almost dreading having lunch and P.E. next where I won’t be able to become Carmex Man.  As much as I want to, I don’t think he could handle the school’s food or dodgeball with the seniors.  After all, he is just a tube of lip care product; he can only do so much.  I sit down at the lunch table with my friends and a tray of what appears to be rubber on a bun, French fries that were just cut from the potato and left uncooked, a chocolate milk that is semi frozen, and six packets of ketchup to drown it all in.  To take my mind off the plastic food that little kids play with and that we are expected to eat, I start to tell my equally disgusted companions about Carmex Man.  At first they laugh and say that I’ve completely lost it.  Then as I tell them how fast classes went by and all the things that he can do, they start to become more interested.  By the end of lunch, all my friends have resolved to go out and by some Carmex of their own.  We will make a League of Carmex, fighting injustices everywhere.  We will start with the lunchtime “food” which we have managed to choke down while thinking about happier things, like stuff that has actually been cooked or that came from an animal or plant, not cardboard and discarded Barbie dolls.  After lunch I head to the locker room to change for P.E.  I hate having this class 4th hour.  You are forced to run around on what should be a full stomach and if you get too sweaty then you have to go to last hour and be known as the smelly kid.  Luckily because I always eat the school’s lunch, I am never full and I don’t reek from sweat because I just don’t sweat that much.  Don’t get me wrong, I love P.E.  A game of kickball or dodgeball is just what I usually need, but that was before I discovered Carmex Man.  I change and head out to the gym to stretch.  Our teacher is very worried that we will pull something during kickball in the gym. Yeah, right.  My group of friends in this class all just kick a home run every time we are up and then jog around the bases.  And we are the most athletic ones in there.  The rest of the kids either stand around talking or sit around talking.  All in all, it’s a very easy hour and one that I enjoy.  As I change out of my gym clothes and hear the bell ring I get even happier though because I know that soon, Carmex Man will face another crisis and I am wondering just how he will be able to get out of this one. 

         

What the heck?  Berry and I have been cramped up in here for an endless amount of time.  The seconds have dragged along trailing the minutes behind them.  What is my giant doing?  This time, I’m not able to work my way up to the top and look out so Berry and I are left with no knowledge of what’s going on.  I can hear voices for awhile and then I even hear the bell that usually signals our freedom, but for some odd reason, this time it doesn’t.  As I wonder about this, the voices stop too.  It feels like we are separated from the giant now.  I don’t know how though because we are still trapped in our little corner of darkness.  After ages of darkness and quiet, I finally hear voices again.  Then I feel like we are once again attached to the giant, who frankly, I am kind of disappointed in right now.  How could he leave us trapped in here for so long while the evil objects have free roam of the universe?  I’m supposed to be out there fighting them and the giant is supposed to aid me in any way possible and transport me in between worlds, not keep me caged up like an animal.  Finally we start to move again and I can almost feel the weight of all the noise that surrounds us.  It is almost a buzz that is pressing down, oppressing us.  Then it starts to get quiet again, just like it usually does when we enter one of the smaller worlds.  This is when I start to pray that very soon I will be released from my confinement.  The sounding of the bell sets me on edge and I wait, expectantly, for the giant’s hand to swoop Berry and me out of this and into the new world we have entered.

         

Its last hour!  Oh boy am I excited!  All I have to deal with before I go home to my bed which feels like a wonderfully comfortable marshmallow and a pantry full of edible food is English class.  English isn’t usually a bad class, and today it should be even better because I have my secret little friend to keep me company!  The best thing about English, besides some of the stories that we read, is the teacher.  The closest thing to him is a fun loving puppy.  Both of them are full of unmatched enthusiasm and an almost limitless supply of bounce off the wall energy.  Sometimes he gets so excited, I’m almost prepared to see that he had a little accident on the floor just like a puppy does when he sees a squirrel that’s just so darn chasable, yet unfortunately the two animals are separated by a layer of glass and wood.  But just like the puppy, our teacher is housetrained and never has an accident, even if he does start to slobber now and then.  Because of this, I almost don’t feel the need to pull out Carmex Man, but then I think about him being locked up all during P. E. and I know he must be itching for some adventure.  Also I notice that we are doing grammar lessons on commas and adverbs today.  Seriously?  This is definitely something I don’t want to review.  I know it and I’m not going to sit through the tedious explanations, even with the possibility of seeing my teacher have a bathroom incident.  Which, although it has never happened, I know that pretty soon he won’t be able to control his excitement and all of a sudden the bathroom will be very far away.  But enough of that line of thinking, since it is rather far fetched; now I must focus on Carmex Man. 

         

At last!  The thing I have been waiting patiently and not so patiently for has finally happened.  The minute I see the giant’s hand come into our place of holding, I feel a burst of happiness rise in me all the way up to my helmet.  Berry and I are picked up and deposited on a tan and brown island much like the ones in the first world in the color of the terrain, but roughly the same size as the gray islands in the second world.  It is no matter to me.  I am just ecstatic that I am out of the darkness and back out into the thrilling world filled with peril and excitement.  I take off from the desk and pirouette through the air.  Berry joins me, and we circle each other, spinning closer and closer until it is almost inevitable that we will collide, but at the last second we pull out of the rotation and back flip down to the surface.  I look for the pencils and notebooks that should be coming at us by now, they always come as soon as they sense me, but instead I should have been looking for an even bigger pair of hands than those of the friendly giants.  Without warning, Berry and I are snatched up by these monstrous appendages and carried off.  Then when we approach the largest of the islands in the room and I see that is covered in hundreds of enemies I know that these hands are a threat.  I expect him to throw us to the scissors or the cupful of pencils or maybe even the huge three ring binder, but he obviously has something else in mind.  We are carried past all of these and deposited in what looks like a huge gaping mouth.  After we land, the top is pushed shut and we are once again left in almost complete and utter darkness, devoid of all sound.  Oh great.

         

Damn it!  He took him.  Right out of my hands.  All I could do was stare speechless, as he approached my desk and reached down to take my two tubes of Carmex.  I guess I got a little carried away and was disrupting the classroom setting.  He is the only teacher that wouldn’t let me play with them.  Ugh, what am I supposed to do for the rest of the period?  Pay attention, hah, not likely!  Well I guess I can always be a baby and pout and just look out the window like I usually did before I discovered Carmex Man.  Minus the pouting though, I had never done that before.  With this new course of action laid out before me, I can only think of two things while I gaze out the window.  First, I can’t wait for the end of class so I can get my Carmex back, and second, I wonder what kind of trouble Carmex Man is getting into while he is trapped in that drawer.

         

I hate this.  We are trapped in the darkness, again, and this time I have no idea as to when we will be let out.  Well at least it’s not total darkness.  The ceiling didn’t shut all of the way and there is still a sliver of light trying to shine through and illuminate this dark cavern.  And with this light I can see Berry and I also see some things moving in the corner.  I inch closer, trying to make out what the objects are, when suddenly one of them jumps out at me!  It’s an eraser!  It sends me crashing into the side of our prison and I lay there stunned.  Berry rushes over to protect me from what I now see are two pens, an eraser, and seven paper clips.  This is trouble.  None of these enemies are very big and by themselves it would be a piece of cake to dispose of them, but they are not by themselves.  We are all grouped together in a tiny dungeon that gives us no room to fly and not much space to maneuver.  They might be able to crush us just from sheer numbers.  But no matter how difficult and hopeless it seems, Berry and I will stick it out, even though we are also missing the aid of my giant.  As I struggle to my feet, the eraser charges again, this time aiming at Berry.  However, she sees its attack this time and jumps out of the way, swinging her body as she does.  With this, she is able to send the eraser flying.  It is out of the fight.  Since we are outnumbered, the best thing for us to do is wait and stay on the defensive.  This works to our advantage because in the cramped space that we are in, the paper clips are forced to come at us two at a time.  With this in our favor, the paper clips are easy to dispose of with a spray of goo that leaves their points useless and their bodies stuck to the ground.  The pens are the only things left now, it is two on two.  Finally fair odds or at least they would be if Berry and I weren’t so furious about being trapped in here.  The pens come flying at us and one of them sends Berry crashing to the ground.  It flips over and starts to stab her with its point.  I leave the one that I am fighting and throw myself at the pen that is about to puncture Berry.  One hit from my red helmet and the black insides of the pen come oozing out through the crack I put in his side.  Now that I know Berry is out of harms way, I turn back to the pen that is lurking behind me.  A quick flip leaves him disoriented and open to another hit from my protected head.  This fight is over.  As I go back to check on Berry, I realize how exhausted I am.  I hear the bell ring once more and with the sound I also get the feeling that I am done for the day.  I don’t know why I have that impression; I just know it to be true.  And you know what, I’m okay with it.  Berry and I will rest up and be back in the fight tomorrow.  No world is too big a match for me, Carmex Man. 

         

Freedom!  The sweet ring of the end of the day bell always manages to bring a smile to my face, and today the smile is even bigger because I know that I get Carmex Man back from the drawer now.  It was strange though.  While I was staring out the window, I wasn’t really seeing the trees or the old guy riding his bike or even the squirrels that excite the puppy inside of my teacher so much.  Instead, I was seeing the world through Carmex Man’s eyes just like I had in all of my other classes when I had played with him.  But I wasn’t holding him in my hands; he was trapped in a drawer across the room.  I guess my imagination must be getting really good and I must have been extremely bored if I was able to picture Carmex Man as easily as I did.  Whatever, it must have just been the longing I had for my new toys that made me picture something as crazy as the fight I had envisioned.  As I head up to my teacher’s desk to pick up my tubes of Carmex, I am expecting a lecture on classroom etiquette.  What I’m not expecting is for him to just turn and gape at me and then drop the tubes into my hand without saying anything.  I start to ask him if he’s ok and he just points to the door with a shaking finger.  I walk out in silence, almost as dumbfounded as my teacher, because I saw what had freaked him out.  I caught a glimpse inside the drawer that Carmex Man and Berry had been locked in and what I saw chilled me to the bone.  I guess that the power of the mind can be very strong sometimes.  But instead of the more reasonable feelings I should be experiencing like fear, paranoia, and the threat of a mental breakdown, I find myself instead just chuckling and shaking my head because I should have known what he was capable of even without me.  And I find myself looking forward to school tomorrow, all thanks to Carmex Man, fighter of pencils, vanquisher of boredom, and healer of chapped lips.