One day at TAG, Mrs. Gerritz announced we'd each be doing a report and then presenting it in front of the class. Rats. But since we were all second and third graders, she was going to pick the topic: Cottontailed bunnies!      She also paired us all up involuntarily. I was going to work on my presentation with fellow classmate Micah Butt.  Boy, we liked saying his last name. Butt, Butt, Butt.....it was a 90's thing.      Well, I did the research. I put the cottontail information on notecards, just like the teacher said! Then, this being my first report, I stuffed them in a drawer, forgot about what they had said, and watched PBS.      "Mathman, your mission is to eat all the parallelograms on the       board, and no other polygon! When you reach a shape, you will have       until the count of 3 to make your decision! And beware of the odious       Mr. Glitch!" "GRRRARRRERRR!!!" "He will eat YOU if you are wrong!!"     By the way, PBS has since stopped trying to appeal to grade-schoolers. Now the money's at the kindergarten crowd! But it wasn't so then. They had a football helmet on Mathman so they wouldn't get sued for ripping off Pac-Man. The ruse worked--they hardly looked the same.      The morning of the cottontail presentations, Mrs. Gerritz had several props we could use while we gave our information. The most popular was the cardboard TV that you could crawl into and make your report into a TV show from. Naturally me and Micah chose that. It didn't occur to me until I finally got up and in that box, facing the crowd, that I didn't remember squat of what I had written.      "Okay, this is my report! Cottontails.....uh.....       Cottontails.........................       Uh.......................       "WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY????"       The class blew up with laughter. Micah, sensing disaster, stepped in and yelled, "THIS IS A SPECIAL REPORT! RABID COTTONTAILS MAY BE COMING OUR WAY TO PORTLAND, OREGON!!!"      "OOOOWWW!" I said, playing along. "THESE COTTONTAILS BITE! OOOWWWWCHHH!!"      "Now back to our program," said Micah.      "Okay, I know now! Cottontails like to lie in warm, grassy places! And...       And................................       "WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY?????"       The class exploded again, and Micah rushed back in.       "THIS IS ANOTHER SPECIAL REPORT! THE RABID COTTONTAILS ARE GETTING CLOSER! OH-NO!!!"       "OOOOWWWW!!!! THIS HURRRRTS!!"       It went on like this, back and forth, for about 5 minutes, until finally something that resembled a climax happened.      "THE RABID COTTONTAILS ARE---"      "Hey, I remembered my next part! Let me say it!"      "I'm not finished! Now, the rabid-----"      "LET ME SAAAAAAAAYYYY IT!!!!!!!"      "NO! I'M NOT DONE!"      "LET ME SAY IT NO I SAID LET ME I'M NOT DONE BUT I REMEMBERED IT GO AWAY OR I'LL PUNCH YOUR FACE IN BUT I REMEMBERED IT GET OUT OF HERE NO YOU MAKE ME OKAY I THINK I WILL OW TEACHER HE HURT ME NOW LET ME SAY IT!!!!!!!!"      The fight got so brutal in there, none of us noticed the box starting to tip. It toppled over and threw us sideways with a loud THUD for the grand finale!      I coughed and climbed out of the box. "SO THAT'S MY REPORT!"      *continued next page*