Read Mr. Tony Is Full of Baloney! Online
Authors: Dan Gutman
Mr. Tony Is Full of Baloney! (3 page)
When I got to school on Monday morning, everybody was putting cans of food into big cardboard boxes by the front office. The kids at our school collected a
lot
of food.
And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years what happened at school that day.
Nothing.
No, really! I mean it. I’m not just saying that. Nothing happened. It was the most boring day in the history of the world.
But at the
end
of the day, I went to the ASKK room with the guys. A few minutes later Mr. Tony showed up. He wasn’t jumping on a pogo stick and juggling this time. He was jogging with a spoon in his mouth, and there was an egg on the spoon.
“Mr. Tony reporting for duty!” he said after he took the spoon out of his mouth. We all giggled because he said “duty” again.
“Mr. Tony, why were you holding a spoon in your mouth with an egg on it?” Andrea asked.
“I’m trying to get into
The Guinness Book of World Records
for egg-jogging,” Mr. Tony told us. “The record for running a mile while holding a spoon in your mouth with an egg on it is over eight minutes. I’m trying to break it.”
“And that’s going to help you quit smoking?” Andrea asked.
“Yes!” Mr. Tony said. “As long as I have a spoon in my mouth, I can’t smoke.”
Mr. Tony sure comes up with weird ways to quit smoking.
“Hey, how about we play a word game today?” he said. “Who can use the word ‘spaghetti’ in a sentence?”
Andrea got all excited and was waving her arm in the air like it was on fire. But Mr. Tony called on me. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.
“Abraham Lincoln gave the Spaghettisburg Address,” I said.
Everybody laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny.
“Lincoln gave the
Gettysburg
address, Arlo!” Little Miss Perfect said, rolling her eyes. “Not Spaghettisburg!”
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
“Try another one, A.J.,” Mr. Tony said. “Can you use the word ‘toiletries’ in a sentence?”
“Sure,” I said. “Out in the forest there were some oak trees, some maple trees, and some toilet trees.”
Everybody laughed again even though I didn’t say anything funny.
“There’s no such thing as a toilet tree, Arlo!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes again.
“Yeah, toilets don’t grow on trees,” said Emily. “Toiletries are what you bring in a little bag when you go on vacation.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Why would you take a toilet with you on vacation? Where do you go on vacation anyway? The Land of No Toilets? When I go on vacation, they have toilets there
already
. I don’t have to bring one with me.”
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
I was just yanking her chain, but Emily looked like she was going to cry, as usual. Sheesh, get a grip! That girl needs to go to the drugstore and buy a chill pill. She’ll cry at the drop of a hat.
Actually, it’s true. One time after school I took Emily’s hat and dropped it in a puddle. She started crying, of course.
“No arguing in the ASKK room,” said Mr. Tony. “I have an idea! Let’s play Simon Says!”
“I hate Simon Says,” I said.
“Well, we’re going to play Simon Says, A.J., and I want
you
to be Simon,” said Mr. Tony. “We will do anything you tell us to do as long as you say ‘Simon Says’ first.”
“Anything?” I asked.
“Anything,” Mr. Tony said.
“Anything?” I repeated.
“Anything,” Mr. Tony repeated.
We went back and forth like that for a while.
“Okay,” I said. “Simon Says we stop playing Simon Says and make a pizza instead.”
“Yeah!” everybody shouted. “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!”
“Okay! Okay!” Mr. Tony said. “You win. And because you kids are so smart, we’ll make
two
pizzas today.”
“Yay!”
We made pizza just like last time, but Mr. Tony gave us some mushrooms, sausage, and bacon to put on one of them. He says you can put anything on a pizza.
While we ate, we asked Mr. Tony about pogo-juggling and egg-jogging. He said he hadn’t broken any records yet, but he was working on it. His goals were to get into
The Guinness Book of World Records
someday and to stop smoking.
“Wouldn’t it be great to be the best person in the world at something?” he asked us.
“That would be cool,” I agreed.
Mr. Tony told us that you didn’t have to be a great singer or athlete or superstar to break a world record. Regular people can break records, too.
“A man in England smashed forty eggs against his head in a minute,” he told us. “He’s in
The Guinness Book of World Records
for that.”
“WOW!” we all said, which is “MOM” upside down.
“And there’s this man in New York who pushed an orange for a mile with his nose in 22 minutes and 41 seconds.”
Mr. Tony told us more stories about crazy people who were in
The Guinness Book of World Records
. There was a guy in Australia who put on twenty pairs of underpants in one minute to set the world record for putting on underpants in one minute. Can you believe that? And some other guy smashed forty-six wooden toilet seat lids with his head. And then somebody in Texas got into a bathtub with eighty-seven rattlesnakes to set a world record. It was hilarious.
If you ask me, people who try to set records are weird.
My mom told me that her catering company wasn’t doing very well. The Six Moms still didn’t have any customers, and nobody wanted to buy their fancy sandwiches. Mom said it was because of the economy, whatever that means.
But the food drive at school was going
great
. Every morning there was more food in the cardboard boxes by the front office. And then, finally, one morning we saw a big sign on the wall . . .
WE DID IT! WE COLLECTED 3,000 POUNDS OF FOOD! GREAT JOB, ELLA MENTRY SCHOOL STUDENTS!
At lunchtime I sat in the vomitorium with the guys. Andrea and her girlie friends sat at the next table so they could annoy us. Me and Michael had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (that weren’t fancy at all). Ryan and Neil the nude kid bought the school lunch. Ugh, disgusting!
“When is Mr. Klutz going to jump out of a plane in an ape suit?” asked Neil the nude kid.
“I hope he does it when we’re at ASKK,” said Michael.
“Hey, do you think Mr. Tony will pogo-juggle or egg-jog today?” asked Ryan.
“Who knows?” said Neil. “He sure is a weird guy.”
“Maybe Mr. Tony isn’t really the ASKK director at all,” I told the guys. “Did you ever think of that?”
“What do you mean, A.J.?” asked Michael.
“Well, maybe Mr. Tony is an evil genius who wants to take over the world,” I said. “Maybe he kidnapped our
real
ASKK director and has him tied up to some railroad tracks. Stuff like that happens all the time, you know.”
At the next table, Andrea looked all worried.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her. “Are you afraid that our real ASKK director is tied to the railroad tracks?”
“No, Arlo,” Andrea said. “I’m worried about Mr. Tony.”
“What about him?” I asked.
“My mother is a psychologist,” she said. “She told me that some people are so desperate to be famous that they’ll do just about anything to draw attention to themselves and make people like them. Like those parents who said their son was up in a hot-air balloon last year. And those two people who crashed a party at the White House.”
“You think Mr. Tony is crazy?” I asked.
“No,” Andrea said. “But it’s sad that he thinks he has to do such crazy things so people will like him. My mom thinks that’s why he’s addicted to cigarettes, too.”
“I know how to solve this problem,” I said.
“How?” asked Emily.
“It’s simple,” I told them. “We just need to make Mr. Tony famous.”
“And how are we going to do that, Arlo?” Andrea asked.
We all thought and thought and thought for a million hundred seconds. That’s when I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world. It was like a lightbulb appeared over my head.
4
“Mr. Tony is great at making pizza, right?” I asked.
“Right,” everybody replied.
“Well,” I said, “what if he made the biggest pizza in the world? That would make him famous. Maybe he would get into
The Guinness Book of World Records
. And if your mom is right, maybe Mr. Tony would stop smoking, too.”
“That just might work, Arlo!” Andrea said.
“A.J., you’re a genius!” said Michael.
I should get the No Bell Prize for that idea.
That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.
Instead of going out for recess, we all rushed over to the school library. Our media specialist, Mrs. Roopy, was in there eating her lunch.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” she asked.
That’s grown-up talk for “What are
you
doing here?”
“We need to see
The Guinness Book of World Records
right away!” I told her. I was all out of breath.
Mrs. Roopy put her hand on my forehead.
“A.J., are you feeling okay?” she asked. “I’ve never heard you say you wanted to read a book before. Maybe I should call an ambulance and get you to the hospital.”
“He’s fine,” said Neil the nude kid.
“We need to do some research, Mrs. Roopy,” said Andrea. “We want to find out how big the biggest pizza in the world is.”
Mrs. Roopy got
The Guinness Book of World Records
off a shelf, and we all gathered around her to look at it.
“Let’s see,” she said, leafing through the book. “Here’s a man who balanced a refrigerator on his teeth for ten seconds. That’s remarkable! And here’s a man who ate a whole bicycle. That’s amazing!”
“Nothing about giant pizzas in there?” asked Ryan.
Finally Mrs. Roopy found the section on food, and there it was: the biggest pizza in the world was made in South Africa in 1990. It was 386 feet around, and it had 1,764 pounds of cheese and 1,985 pounds of tomato sauce on it.
“WOW!” Michael said, which is “MOM” upside down. “That’s a big pizza!”
“How could we possibly make a pizza bigger than that one?” asked Ryan.
That’s when I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world.
“Our school collected over 3,000 pounds of food,” I said. “We could use the food from the food drive to make our pizza!”
“The food we collected is for hungry people, A.J.,” Mrs. Roopy said. “It would be wrong to use that food just to break a world record.”
“Nobody puts beans or soup on pizza anyway,” said Ryan.
Okay, so maybe my idea wasn’t so great after all.
We all thought and thought and thought. I thought so hard that I thought my head was going to explode. Suddenly, Andrea got this gleam in her eye.
“I know!” she said. “The Six Moms can supply the ingredients for our pizza! Our school could be the first customer of our moms’ new catering company!”
“Yeah!” said Emily, who always agrees with everything Andrea says.
It was a good idea, I had to admit. But there wasn’t any lightbulb over Andrea’s head, and I wasn’t about to admit out loud that she had a good idea.
“That’s the dumbest idea in the history of the world,” I said.