Miss Small Is off the Wall! (2 page)

My name is A.J. and I hate school.

Well, I hate that reading and writing and arithmetic part of school, anyway. That stuff is for the birds!

There's only one thing about school that I like.

Fizz Ed.

Fizz Ed! I
love
Fizz Ed! Fizz Ed is the coolest! Fizz Ed isn't even like school at
all
. Fizz Ed is what you would be doing if you didn't have to
go
to school. If you ask me, school would be cool if we could just have Fizz Ed all day long and forget about all that boring reading and writing and arithmetic stuff.

Well, actually, to be honest, I've never had Fizz Ed. At my school, the Ella Mentry School, we didn't have Fizz Ed last year when we were in first grade. But my friend Billy around the corner goes to a different school. Billy's in third grade, and he told me that at his school they play dodgeball and basketball and
football in Fizz Ed. They get to do anything they want.

Man, I wish I could go to Billy's school instead of boring old Ella Mentry School. I've been waiting forever until I got to second grade, when we would have Fizz Ed.

“Okay, everybody, it's time to line up,” my teacher, Miss Daisy, announced one morning after we pledged the allegiance.

“Line up for what?” we all asked.

“Fizz Ed!” Miss Daisy said. “We're going to meet Miss Small in the gym.”

“Yippee!”

“Yippee!” I shouted.

“Hooray!” shouted my friends Ryan and Michael. We all whooped and hollered and high-fived each other. Finally we could go to Fizz Ed and leave all that reading and writing and arithmetic behind for a change. Miss Daisy gave each of us a
name tag so Miss Small, the Fizz Ed teacher, would know who we were.

“What's Fizz Ed?” asked this girl who has red hair named Emily (well, actually the
girl
is named Emily, not her hair). “Are we going to learn about soda pop?”

Me and Ryan and Michael slapped our own heads. We couldn't believe it. That
was like the stupidest thing anybody ever said in the history of the world.

“Fizz Ed is gym class, dumbhead!” I told Emily. “Everybody knows that.”

Emily looked all upset like she was going to start crying. That girl cries at any old thing.

“A.J.!” Miss Daisy said with her mean face. “Hold your tongue!”

“Okay.”

So I stuck out my tongue and held onto it. Everybody laughed. Well, everybody but Emily and Miss Daisy.

The whole class lined up in size order so Miss Daisy could walk us over to the gym, which is all the way at the other end of the school. Ryan was the line leader.

“I bet Miss Small will let us play football and baseball and hockey and dodgeball,” Michael whispered to me as we walked. Michael and Ryan are really good at sports. They're the best athletes in the second grade.

“Sports are cool,” I said.

“Except for curling,” said Michael. “That's just dumb.”

“That's not even a sport,” I said. “Curling is what girls do to their hair.”

This girl with curly brown hair named
Andrea Young must have heard me, because she laughed even though I didn't say anything funny.

“Curling is
too
a sport,” she said. “I saw it in a book about the Olympics. They take this big rock and slide it down the ice while somebody sweeps the ice in front of it with a broom.”

Andrea thinks she is so smart. She probably goes home after school and reads the dictionary for fun. That way she can brag about how much she knows.

“You don't know anything about sports,” I told Andrea.

“Do too,” Andrea said back at me. “I
take a dance class every day after school. I'm learning ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, and clog dancing.”

Andrea is one of those kids who takes lessons in everything. All she has to do is sneeze and her mother probably signs her up for sneezing lessons.

“Dancing is not a sport,” I said. “Dancing is dumb.”

“A little less chitchatting in the hall, please,” said Miss Daisy as we walked to the gym.

“Do we really have to go to Fizz Ed, Miss Daisy?” asked Andrea. “Isn't it more important for us to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic?”

“Strong mind, strong body,” said Miss Daisy.

Ha-ha-ha! Smarty-pants Andrea Young was gonna to have to do something
she
didn't like for a change. She wouldn't be the best in the class for a change. Welcome to my world, Andrea!

I couldn't wait to beat Andrea at basketball. Beat her at baseball. Beat her at football. This was going to be the greatest day in my life!

Andrea Young probably doesn't even know the difference between a football and a footprint.

Finally, after walking about a hundred miles, we reached the gym. It's this giant room with a basketball hoop at each end.

“Miss Small?” called Miss Daisy. “Are you here?”

Nobody answered, but there was an echo in the gym so we could hear Miss Daisy's words over and over again when they bounced off the walls.

“Miss Small?…Miss Small?…Miss Small?…Miss Small?…Are you here?…Are you here?…Are you here?”

It was cool.

“Hello!” I yelled.

The gym yelled back, “Hello!…Hello!…Hello!…Hello!…Hello!”

“Echo!” yelled Michael.

“Echo…echo…echo…echo,” yelled the gym.

“A.J. is stupid!” yelled Ryan.

“A.J. is stupid!…A.J. is stupid!…A.J. is stupid!…A.J. is stupid!” yelled the gym.

I was gonna yell, “Ryan is a dumbhead,” but instead Miss Daisy yelled, “Stop that, boys!”

“Stop that, boys!…Stop that, boys!…Stop that, boys!” yelled the gym.

It was cool.

At that very moment, somebody came running out of the office at the other end of the gym. It was the most amazing thing any of us had ever seen.

It was Miss Small.