The View from Saturday Chapter 7 Summary

  • The commissioner allows "posh" but not "tip. Julian objects. The commissioner is too stunned that a sixth grader is talking back to him that he forgets to disqualify the whole team for impertinence.
  • (Side note: We hate to be those people, but it looks like the commissioner is actually right the first time. The stories about both "tip" and "posh" are apocryphal.)
  • Anyway, we have to leave Julian again and go back to Mrs. Olinski, who is hard at work (in the past) preparing her team for the competition.
  • The morning of the competition, people are agitated.
  • The first agitated person is Mr. LeDue, the principal of the school that The Souls are competing against. He tells Mrs. O that he's threatened to hang his team's coach if they lose.
  • Pretty sure threats like that are illegal, Mr. L.
  • The second agitated person is Dr. Roy Clayton Rohmer, the superintendent of the school district. Unfortunately, his second-in-command is a real dummy, and he's the one reading the questions. We're talking the danger of Dan-Quayle-level goofs. (For you young 'uns: Dan Quayle was Bush Sr.'s VP back in 1992. He was reading cards at a spelling bee and misspelled "potato." True story.)
  • It's the big day, and everyone's psyched. The cafeteria is packed. Everything is going smoothly until the second-in-command, a guy named Mr. Fairbain, good-naturedly asks Julian what tribe he's part of.
  • Fact: Julian is East Indian, not American Indian. Awkward!
  • Anyhoo, guess who wins this competition?
  • The Souls.
  • And the whole school is so excited that they physically lift Mrs. O's wheelchair and carry her on a victory march out to the parking lot. It looks like The Souls are giving her that lift they were talking about.