Miss Daisy Is Crazy!

me?” Boomer said, like he wasn’t sure if he had heard the question.
    “Well, somebody once told me that if you play football, you don’t have to know how to read or write or do arithmetic or go to school.”
    “Who told you that?” Boomer asked Miss Daisy.
    Everybody looked at me. I slid down so that my head was almost under my desk, and I hid behind my notebook.
    “Oh, a good friend of mine told me,” Miss Daisy said. “Is it true?”
    “If I didn’t go to school, I never could have become a football player,” Boomer told us. “I have to read and study my playbook very carefully. I have to write letters to my fans. Every week I have to study very hard to get ready for the next game.”
    “Did you go to college?” asked Miss Daisy.
    “Yes,” Boomer said, “and when my football career is over, I plan to go back to school so I can become a doctor.”
    “Wow!” I said. “I want to go to college someday so I can become a doctor and knock guys on their butts. I mean butt.” Everybody laughed, even though I didn’t say anything funny. Then, to prove how smart he was, Boomer Wiggins read us a book and passed out bookmarks that said “Achieve Your Goal by Reading” on them.
    Miss Daisy said that even though Boomer read the book to us, we could still add fifty-two pages to the total number of pages we’ve read.
    The temperature level on the thermometer in the hallway kept getting higher and higher.

     

Finally the big moment arrived. It was Andrea Young (of course!) who read the one-millionth page. We all cheered when Miss Daisy went out in the hallway and filled in the top of the thermometer all the way up to the words One million.
    That Friday night, everybody in the whole school showed up at school. Can you believe it? I actually couldn’t wait to get to school . . . on the weekend! When we got there, a big banner was hanging over the front door that said WE READ A MILLION PAGES! on it. Principal Klutz was waiting for us. 

    He was wearing a gorilla suit, just like he promised. Inside there was a table of snacks and treats and juice.
    Miss Daisy had brought in bonbons.
    But best of all, the gym was filled wall to wall with video games!

    I had never seen so many video games in my life. Families had brought in lots of TV sets, game systems, and games, and lined them up all around the gym. We could play all we wanted, and the only rule was that you had to take turns.
    For the kids who didn’t like video games, there were tables of board games set up in the middle of the gym. (I think they’re called board games because you get so bored playing them.)
    I played just about every video game in the gym. After a few hours of staring into screens, I had a splitting headache, my hands hurt, and I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head.
    It was the greatest night of my life.
     

Monday at school, we had social studies.
    Miss Daisy said she was really sorry, but she didn’t know anything at all about social studies and that we would have to help her.
    “I don’t even know the name of the first president of the United States,” she told us.
    “You don’t?” we all said.
    “I haven’t a clue.”
    “It was George Washington!” we all shouted.
    “Really?” Miss Daisy said with a wink. “Never heard of him.”
    I was beginning to suspect that Miss Daisy might have been just pretending that she didn’t know anything all along.
    One day I caught her looking at a piece of paper, and her eyes were moving back and forth like she was watching a Ping-Pong game.
    “Hey, you’re reading!” I said.
    “I am not!” she insisted. “You know I can’t read.”
    “Then how come your eyes are moving back and forth like you’re watching a Ping-Pong game?”
    “I—I was just thinking about this great Ping-Pong game I saw once,” she replied.
    “It was great. You should have been there.” Maybe she was joking, and maybe she wasn’t. You can never tell with Crazy Miss Daisy.
    If it turns out that Miss Daisy really doesn’t know anything, I feel a little sorry for her. The kids in our school had read a million pages, and she couldn’t read one page. The kids in our class knew how to spell, and do arithmetic and social studies. She hardly knew anything at all!
    “Don’t feel bad, Miss Daisy,” I told her.
    “We’ll teach you reading, writing, and arithmetic. And we won’t tell Principal Klutz how dumb you are.” She gave me a big hug.
    It will be hard work teaching Miss