5

If you get a certain number of Hero Points, you can turn them in for prizes like extra recess time. And the homeroom that gets the MOST Hero Points gets a day off from school in June. I actually thought it was a pretty decent idea, but of course people always have to go and mess things up. Right away kids realized they didn't actually have to do good deeds to get Hero Points. They just started

FAKING good deeds whenever the teachers were around. LET ME HELP YOU WITH THOSE BOOKS, ANTHONY! WHY, THANK YOU, PETER! Hero Pints are printed on sheets of ten, and teachers tear one off when they want to reward a kid. Eric Glick got his hands on one of the sheets and photocopied it, so after that there were all these counterfeit Hero Points going around school. Eric started selling them for twenty-five cents a point, but then other kids realized THEY could make copies, too, and after that there were so many hero points going around that you could buy a HUNDRED for a QUARTER.

The teachers got suspicious when the worst kids in our class started turning in tons of Hero Points for extra recess. So the school invalidated all the Hero Points printed on white paper and created a whole new batch on GREEN paper. But it didn't take long for people to start making copies on green paper, and the whole thing started all over again.

Every time the school changed the color of the paper, there would be fakes made within twenty-four hours. Finally, the school started punishing kids who turned in more than five Hero Points at a time, because the teachers saw that as proof they were counterfeit. But THAT wasn't fair, either. Marcel Templeton, one of the nicest kids in our class, got put in detention for the rest of the month even though he earned his thirty-five hero appoints legitimately.

Eventually, the janitor busted one of the main counterfeit operations when he walked into an empty Science room that kids were using as their base. The school cancelled the whole Hero Points program after that, which stinks because now that extra recess is off the table, nobody's willing to do anything nice.

Sunday I think Mom took that stuff I said about popularity with kids my age to heart, because today she took me out clothes shopping. Ordinarily I can't STAND going clothes shopping, because the only time we do it is at the beginning of the school year. And once a year is enough for ME.