"You can't paddle me for something I didn't do," Tom said, glaring at the teacher.
"But I can paddle you for not telling me who did it." Mr. Standish had an answer for everything. (7.45-46)
Let's all just take a moment to appreciate that it used to be okay, and even encouraged, for teachers to physically beat students who misbehaved. Can you even imagine? No thank you.
Tom was rubbing his hands gleefully as we left the schoolhouse. "I told you I would make Mr. Standish rue the day he paddled me," he chuckled. "He was a fool to go up against my great brain." (7.145)
The Great Brain almost meets his match in Mr. Standish, but he thoroughly succeeds in getting Mr. Standish fired, so go ahead and give Tom another point. Dude is so good at getting what he wants.
"I guess your little brain is too little to understand," Tom said as if I'd stabbed him in the back. "I've taken on a task no other kid in town would touch—teaching Basil English and how to be a good American kid. You saw how happy I made Basil. You saw how happy I made his father and mother. Would you rather I abandon Basil and let the other kids in town make a fool out of him the way they did playing Jackass Leapfrog? I think you owe me an apology, J.D."
I was now the one who felt ashamed. Here my brother was doing a wonderful, kind, and generous thing and I hadn't realized it. (5.83-84)
Oh, poor J.D. Life with Tom is one never-ending game of "Jackass Leapfrog," and he doesn't even realize it. Do you think he'll ever get hip to his brother's ways?