2 Ch2-Smarty-pants and Dumbhead

Chapter 2 Smarty-pants and Dumbhead "Yippee!" I shouted. "Hooray!" shouted my friends Ryan and Michael. We all whooped and hollered and high-fived each other. Finally we could go to Fizz Ed and leave all that read- ing and writing and arithmetic behind for a change. Miss Daisy gave each of us a

name tag so Miss Small, the Fizz Ed teacher, would know who we were. "What's Fizz Ed?" asked this girl who has red hair named Emily (well, actually the girl is named Emily, not her hair). "Are we going to learn about soda pop?" Me and Ryan and Michael slapped our own heads. We couldn't believe it. That

was like the stupidest thing anybody ever said in the history of the world. "Fizz Ed is gym class, dumbhead!" I told Emily, "Everybody knows that." Emily looked all upset like she was going to start crying. That girl cries at any old thing. "A.J.!" Miss Daisy said with her mean face. "Hold your tongue!" "Okay." So I stuck out my tongue and held onto it. Everybody laughed. Well, everybody but Emily and Miss Daisy.

The whole class lined up in size order so Miss Daisy could walk us over to the gym, which is all the way at the other end of the school. Ryan was the line leader. "I bet Miss Small will let us play foot- ball and baseball and hockey and dodge- ball," Michael whispered to me as we walked. Michael and Ryan are really good at sports. They're the best athletes in the second grade. "Sports are cool," I said. "Except for curling," said Michael. "That's just dumb." "That's not even a sport," I said. "Curling is what girls do to their hair." This girl with curly brown hair named

Andrea Young must have heard me, because she laughed even though I didn't say anything funny. "Curling is too a sport," she said. "I saw it in a book about the Olympics. They take this big rock and slide it down the ice while somebody sweeps the ice in front of it with a broom." Andrea thinks she is so smart. She probably goes home after school and reads the dictionary for fun. That way she can brag about how much she knows. "You don't know anything about sports," I told Andrea. "Do too," Andrea said back at me. "I

take a dance class every day after school. I'm learning ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, and clog dancing." Andrea is one of those kids who takes lessons in everything. All she has to do is sneeze and her mother probably signs her up for sneezing lessons. "Dancing is not a sport," I said. "Dancing is dumb." "A little less chitchatting in the hall, please," said Miss Daisy as we walked to the gym. "Do we really have to go to Fizz Ed, Miss Daisy?" asked Andrea. "Isn't it more important for us to learn reading, writ- ing, and arithmetic?"