Contents 1 A Ghost in the Bathroom 2 The New Student Teacher 3 Miss Mary Is Weird 4 Bog Snorkeling and Cheese Rolling 5 Learning More About England 6 Vampires Are Cute 7 I Love Dirt 8 Zack’s Big Nose 9 Cantaloupe 10 Talking Turkey 11 Halloween 12 A Bathroom Emergency About the Author and Illustrator Credits
1 A Ghost in the Bathroom My name is A.J. and I hate school. It was a couple of weeks before Halloween, which is the coolest holiday of the year. We get to wear our costumes to school on Halloween and have a big candy party. At the end of the day we parade around the block with all the par- ents watching. Marching in a parade is way bet- ter than watching a parade, because you don’t have to stand in one place for a million hundred hours. “Hang up your coats in the cloakroom,” said my teacher, Mr. Granite, who is from another planet. What a weird name for a room: “cloakroom.” Who wears a cloak? I don’t even know what a cloak is.
After we finished circle time and Word of the Day, Mr. Granite told us to take out our math books and turn to page twenty-three. “Can I go to the bathroom?” I asked. “Do you really need to, A.J.?” said Mr. Gran- ite. “Yes!” I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom. Sometimes I go to the bathroom even though I don’t have to. Like when Mr. Granite is teach- ing math. I hate math. Math is the perfect time to go to the bathroom. “Arlo doesn’t need to go to the bathroom,” said Andrea Young, this annoying girl with curly brown hair. She calls me by my real name because she knows I don’t like it. “I do too.” “Do not.” We went back and forth like that for a while. But the teachers have to let you go to the bath- room. It’s a law. If they don’t let you go to the bathroom, they have to go to jail. “Go ahead, A.J.,” Mr. Granite grumbled.
“The boys’ bathroom is haunted, y’know,” whispered my friend Ryan. “I heard there’s a ghost in there.” “Yeah, watch out for that ghost,” said my friend Michael. “He eats kids for lunch.” That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing as a ghost. And even if there were ghosts, they wouldn’t go to the bathroom. They don’t have to. Even if ghosts did have to go to the bath- room, they wouldn’t haunt one. Ghosts haunt graveyards, basements, and old houses of people who died. Not bathrooms. Everybody knows that. I’m not afraid of ghosts. Still, I was going to be careful, just to be on the safe side. I walked down the hall and * pushed open the door to the bathroom. “Anybody in here?” I asked. Nobody answered. I sat down in one of the stalls. There was nothing to do, but it was better than learning math.
That’s when something really weird happened. The toilet in the stall next to me flushed. “Who’s in there?” I asked, alarmed. Nobody answered. I peeked under the stall to see who was in there. Nobody. “Are you a…ghost?” I asked. The ghost didn’t answer. Maybe it was invis- ible.
I picked up the extra roll of toilet paper in case I had to hit the invisible ghost over the head with it. That’s when something even weirder happened. The toilet on the other side of me flushed! “Who is that?” I demanded. Nobody answered. I peeked under the stall. Nobody was there. This was really weird! Maybe there were two invisible ghosts! And they had me surrounded! I was scared. I wanted to run away to Antarctica and go live with the penguins. But that’s when the weirdest thing in the his- tory of the world happened. The toilet I was sit- ting on suddenly flushed! “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I got up and ran out of the stall. Then I ran past the sinks, and they turned on! Then I ran past the hand dryer, and it turned on! “Help!” I screamed as I ran out the door. “There are ghosts in there!”
I ran back to class and shouted, “There are ghosts in the bathroom! Help!” “Calm down, A.J.,” Mr. Granite told me. “What happened?” “I was in the stall,” I explained, “and the toi- let on my left flushed all by itself! And then the toilet on my right flushed all by itself! And then the toilet I was sitting on flushed all by itself! And the sinks and hand dryer turned on too! But nobody was there! It must be ghosts! The bath- room is haunted! Run for your lives!” Everybody started freaking out, yelling, screaming, and crying. That’s when our custodian, Miss Lazar, came in. “There are no ghosts in the bathroom,” Miss Lazar said. “I recently installed automatic sinks, hand dryers, and toilets to save water and electricity. I was just testing them out to see if they work.” Oh.
Well, maybe there aren’t any ghosts in the bathroom after all. But I’m not going in there again for the rest of my life.
2 The New Student Teacher Mr. Granite told us that it was his idea to install the new water-saving toilets. “Every time you flush a toilet,” he said, “you use up to 5 gallons of water. So five flushes in a day would be…five times five—25 gallons of water a day…” Mr. Granite loves math. “…and that adds up to 175 gallons a week,” Mr. Granite continued. “And 9,100 gallons a year. And do you know how many gallons of wa- ter you will flush down the toilet in your life- time?” He didn’t have the chance to answer the ques- tion, because at that moment the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. The door opened.
Well, that’s not the weird part because doors open all the time. But you’ll never believe who walked into the door. Nobody, because if you walked into a door it would hurt. But you’ll never believe who walked into the doorway. It was our principal, Mr. Klutz! He has no hair at all. I think Mr. Klutz used to have hair, but it fell out a long time ago. That’s what happens when men get old. He held up his hand and made a peace sign, which means “shut up.” “I have big news!” he told us. “Mr. Klutz has a big nose,” I whispered to Ryan, who sits next to me. “What is it?” asked Andrea’s crybaby friend, Emily. “You’re going to get a student teacher!” Mr. Klutz announced. “Isn’t that exciting?” “Yes!” said all the girls. “No!” said all the boys. Wait a minute. Student teacher? That doesn’t make any sense.
“How can a student be a teacher?” I asked. “Or a teacher be a student? A person can either be a student or a teacher, but not both.” “A student teacher is somebody who’s learn- ing how to be a teacher, dumbhead,” said Andrea. “Oh, snap!” said Ryan. “So is your face,” I told Andrea. Any time somebody says something mean to you and you can’t think of what to say, just say, “So is your face.” That’s the first rule of being a kid. “What is our student teacher’s name?” Andrea asked. “When will we meet her?” “Right now!” Mr. Klutz said. “Come on in here, Mary. Don’t be shy. Kids, this is your new student teacher, Miss Mary.”
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