Mr. Klutz Is Nuts!

could hardly wait to see the look on Miss Daisy’s face when she sat on her chair.
    Well, when Miss Daisy sat down, the most amazing thing happened.
    Nothing! She didn’t jump up or anything. She just sat there. Me and Ryan and Michael looked at one another. How could she not feel that?
    “She must have buns of steel!” Ryan whispered.
    “She’s like Superman.”
    Then I realized that I had forgotten to tell Ryan something very important.
    When you put a tack on the teacher’s chair, you’re supposed to put the tack a little bit on one side. When you put it in the middle of the chair, the tack sort of . . . well . . . you know, it doesn’t have any target to hit, if you know what I mean.

    Miss Daisy got up to do math, not even realizing there was a tack in her butt.
    When she turned around to write on the chalkboard, we could see the tack was just stuck there, hanging in the middle of her backside.
    Me and Ryan and Michael thought we were going to die trying to keep our-selves from laughing. It was probably the funniest thing that had ever happened in the history of the world. You should have been there!
    “Excuse me,” said Andrea, raising her hand to ruin everybody’s fun like always.
    “Miss Daisy, I think there’s something stuck to your skirt.”
    Miss Daisy turned around and pulled out the tack. “Who did this?” she demanded.
    “I did!” Ryan bragged.
    “Go to the principal’s office, Ryan.”

    “All right!” Ryan whispered, pumping his fist. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with a candy bar!”
    “Is there anyone else who wants to go to the principal’s office?” Miss Daisy asked.
    “I do!” said Michael.
    “Can I go again?” I said.
    “Hey, I asked first!” Michael complained.
    “Quiet, both of you.”
    Miss Daisy pretended nothing unusual had happened and went back to her lesson, but I saw her look at her chair carefully before she sat down again.
    A few minutes later Ryan came back to the classroom. Mr. Klutz was with him.
    “So did he give you a candy bar?” I whispered excitedly when Ryan sat down.
    “No,” Ryan whispered back. “When I told him that I thought he would give me a candy bar like he gave one to you, he got really upset. He told me he was going to call my parents and have them come in to talk about what happened. I think we’re all in big trouble.”
    Oh, man! I decided that maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to be best friends with Ryan anymore. I should have kept my big mouth shut about the candy bar.
     
     

When I thought about it, putting a tack on Miss Daisy’s chair was a pretty dumb thing to do.
    Mr. Klutz went to the front of the class.
    I was sure he was going to bring all of us to the torture chamber in the basement.
    But he didn’t look all that mad, consider-ing what we had done.

    “It has come to my attention that some of the students at our school need a little extra incentive to behave and work their hardest,” Mr. Klutz said. “Do you know what the word incentive means?” 
    “An incentive is a reward that encourages a person to work harder to achieve something,” Andrea announced, all proud of herself. She thinks she knows everything. I hate her.
    “Very good, Andrea,” said Mr. Klutz.
    “What sort of incentive might bring out the best work in the students of our school?”
    “You could give us each a million dollars,” suggested Michael.
    “You could make summer vacation last all year long,” I said.
    “How about getting rid of homework?” asked Ryan.
    Miss Daisy went to the front of the room. “Mr. Klutz can’t do those things,” she said. “But remember when all the students in our school read a million pages in books, and as a reward we turned the gym into a video-game arcade? That was quite successful. Mr. Klutz even dressed up in a gorilla suit for the evening, if I recall.”
    “How about a chocolate party?” suggested Andrea.
    “Yeah!” everybody yelled.
    “Mmmm,” said Miss Daisy. “I like that idea!”
    We all got very excited, because if there is one thing that just about everybody loves, it’s chocolate. Kids started shouting out things we could have at the party, like chocolate cupcakes and chocolate fudge and chocolate bunnies and chocolate ice cream and on and on and on.

    “But wait a minute,” Mr. Klutz said. “What are you going to do to earn this chocolate party?”
    “We could read another million pages,” suggested Ryan.
    “We did that already,” Emily