The Fonz and Whatshername Plot Thickens

I keep asking my seven-year-old, The Fonz, if he has any new updates on his romance with his Italian classmate, Whatshername. There hadn’t been much to report since my previous Fonz and Whatshername post and I realized maybe that’s because relationships for seven-year-olds don’t go any further than her giving him the nickname ‘Fun Guy’ and letting him see what library books she was checking out.

But now I wonder if the romance has slowed because of the backhanded scheming of his competition.

Yesterday Whatshername approached him and asked if he was English or American. When he answered he was American, she was surprised because another classmate, Tyler, had told her The Fonz was from England. Tyler is a friend of The Fonz and he definitely knows he’s an American.

“Why do you think Tyler told her that?” I asked.
“He must have found out she hated people from England so he said I was English so she wouldn’t like me.”

We tried to think of some reasons she might not like the English but we mostly only came up with reasons Americans might dislike the English, like how they stole our sport soccer and then thought we wouldn’t notice the theft by disguising the sport with the name of one of our other sports, football. I’m assuming as an Italian she’s angry at the English for the 1985 European Cup Final tragedy when Liverpool football fans breached a wall and crushed dozens of Italian Juventus fans. I told The Fonz to ask her if this was the case. He said he wasn’t going to ask that. I told him to tell Whatshername that Tyler’s favorite team was Liverpool.

Tyler’s motivations for turning Whatshername against The Fonz seem pretty obvious.

“Do you think Tyler might like her too?”
“Definitely. Everybody knows that.”
“How do you know?
“She’s the only one he says bye to at the end of Chinese class.”
“That does sound pretty obvious.”
“Also, he tried giving her a high five.”
“Moving a bit fast, isn’t he?”
“And he was looking suspicious when he was standing next to her during an assembly.”
“What did he do to look suspicious?”
“He looked much happier.”

I’ve resolved to being much more suspicious of happiness and much more reserved in outward displays of my own happiness to avoid bringing suspicion on myself.

“If he told her you were English, might he have told her other lies about you?”
“Like what?”
“What if he told her you couldn’t read?”
“Um…I’d ask if I could take a sledgehammer to show and tell.”
“We don’t have a sledgehammer. No taking sledgehammers to school. You could take a spoon for show and tell. A spoon is like a miniature deformed sledgehammer.”
“No it’s not.”
“If you squint your eyes it kind of looks like a sledgehammer.”
“No it doesn’t.”

We’re spending the weekend working on gossip he can tell Whatshername about Tyler. If Tyler is going to go after The Fonz’s nationality, we have no choice but to play dirty and bring attention to Tyler’s. Tyler is from The Netherlands, which is also called Holland, and people from The Netherlands/Holland are called Dutch. That combination of three seemingly unrelated names should make him highly suspicious to any seven-year-old. Even more suspicious than looking happy.