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My Weird School #8: Ms. LaGrange Is Strange!
By Dan Gutman HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Dan Gutman
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060822244
Chapter One
A Pretty Normal Lunch
My name is A.J. and I hate school.
"Which do you hate more," my friend Ryan asked me, "school or vegetables?"
"Hmmm, that's a hard one," I said. "I really hate them both."
"I hate school more than vegetables," said our friend Michael, who never ties his shoes, "because we don't have to sit inside a vegetable all day and learn stuff."
"Good point," I agreed.
"I hate vegetables more than school," Ryan said, "because we don't have to eat the school."
That made perfect sense too. I couldn't make up my mind.
We were in the vomitorium. It was a pretty normal lunch at Ella Mentry School. Ryan stuck carrot sticks in his mouth and said, "Look, I'm a walrus!" Michael put a spoon on his nose, and it hung there. I dared Ryan to put pickle chips on his Tater Tots and eat them. Ryan will eat anything.
Michael dared me to shoot a straw wrapper at Andrea Young, this girl at the next table who is really annoying. The wrapper hit Andrea in the head. She screamed and knocked her apple juice on the floor.
Just at that moment, Andrea's annoying friend Emily was walking by with her tray. Emily slipped on the juice and fell on her butt. As she was falling, she knocked over a whole rack of lunch trays. Crash!
"Ouch!" Emily shouted. "I bumped my mouth. My tooth is loose!"
I don't know why, but when people fall on their butt, it's hilarious. Me and Ryan and Michael just about exploded trying not to laugh. Emily started crying. That big crybaby. She wasn't even hurt, and her tooth was probably loose before she fell.
Mrs. McGillicuddy, the lunch lady, came running out.
"What's going on?" she screamed. "Can't you kids behave?"
Mrs. McGillicuddy is the meanest lunch lady in the history of the world. She's always yelling at us to clean off our table, be quiet, and stop throwing food. She's no fun at all.
Mrs. McGillicuddy must not have seen the apple juice on the floor when she came running out. She slipped on it and fell on her butt too.
It's even funnier when grown-ups fall on their butts, especially mean grown-ups like Mrs. McGillicuddy. Everybody was cracking up.
"You kids are driving me crazy!" Mrs. McGillicuddy shouted. "That's the last straw! I quit!"
She was totally wrong. There were plenty of straws right there on the lunch counter. But Mrs. McGillicuddy must not have noticed. She yanked off her plastic apron, ripped off her plastic gloves, and pulled off her lunch lady hairnet. She threw all that stuff on the floor and stomped out of the vomitorium.
I'll tell you, there are a lot of crazy grown-ups at Ella Mentry School. But this was the first time I ever saw one of them actually go crazy, live and in person. It was cool.
Miss Lazar, our custodian, came over with a mop. I feel sorry for her. Every time some kid spills something, she has to clean it up.
"I love cleaning up messes!" Miss Lazar said, mopping the apple juice off the floor. Miss Lazar is bizarre!
When all the excitement was over, Ryan put a carrot stick in his nose and ate it (the carrot stick, not his nose). Michael made a sculpture out of tuna salad. I threw a cookie to Ryan, and he caught it in his mouth.
Like I said, it was a pretty normal lunch.
Continues...
Excerpted from My Weird School #8: Ms. LaGrange Is Strange! by Dan Gutman Copyright © 2005 by Dan Gutman. Excerpted by permission.
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