2 Ch2-I Hate Love

Chapter 2 I Hate Love When we got to class, our teacher, Miss Daisy, was talking with Mr. Macky, the read- ing specialist. Reading is boring, But Mr. Macky loves reading so much, he walks around reading soup cans. He's weird. "Do we have reading today?" I asked him.

"No," Mr. Macky told me, "we have an assembly." An assembly is when everybody assembles in the all-purpose room. So it has the perfect name. After the morning announcements, we had to walk a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room. It looked weird. There were peace signs, flowers, and lava lamps all over the stage. "Crisscross applesauce," Miss Daisy told us as we sat down. The teachers used to tell us to sit Indian style. But they stopped because they thought Indians might get mad. Then they told us to sit like pretzels. I guess some pretzels got mad, because now the

teachers just say, "Crisscross applesauce." I hope applesauce doesn't get mad." Once everybody was seated, the strangest thing in the history of the world happened. Our principal, Mr. Klutz, got up onstage. Well, that wasn't the strange part. Mr. Klutz gets up onstage all the time. The strange part was that he had hair all the way down to his shoulders! We knew Mr. Klutz was wearing a wig, because just yesterday he was completely bald. Nobody can grow hair that fast. Mr. Klutz held up his hand and made a peace sign, which means shut up.

"Valentine's Day is next week," Mr. Klutz told us, "so I invited a special guest, Put your hands together for..." You'll never believe in a million hun- dred years who came out onstage. It was Mr. Louie! Everybody clapped, because Mr. Louie is cool. I never saw him inside school before. "Groovy!" said Mr. Louie. "I mean... like... you know?" "Mr. Louie knows all about peace and love," Mr. Klutz told us, "so I asked him to help us celebrate Valentine's Day next week." Mr. Louie played a song on his stop sign that was really easy to learn because

it went like this: Love love love Love love love Love love love That song had nothing but the L word

over and over again! It was dumb, but everybody clapped anyway, because we were glad it was over. "Back in the Sixties," Mr. Louie told us, "everybody loved each other. Can you dig it? Don't you think the world would be a better place if everybody loved each other today?" "Yes!" shouted all the girls. "No!" shouted all the boys. Mr. Louie said we were going to send cards, decorate the school with hearts and flowers, and have a big concert on Valentine's Day to celebrate peace and love. "Let's show how much we love each other and make the world a hipper