1 Surprise!

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1 Surprise! My name is A.J. and I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about ants. I know, because that's what I'm thinking about. Did you know that a drone ant lives just three days? Three days! That's its whole life! What can you do in three days? That's not even enough time go

on a vacation. Not that drone ants take vacations. Where would they go? Next door? Some vacation! I looked this up—male mosquitoes only live about one week. That's it. If you were a male mosquito, I guess you could at least go on a vacation for a week. But as soon as you got home from vacation, you'd drop dead. Bummer in the summer! If I was a mosquito on vacation, I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself because the whole time I'd be thinking about dropping dead the minute I got home. That would be one crummy vacation. My parents are forty-something years old. That's really old. Well, it's old compared to ants and mosquitoes, anyway. I'd rather be a person than an ant or a mosquito. At least you can take

a vacation without worrying so much. The point is, I was in Mr. Cooper's class at school the other day. We had just pledged the allegiance and did Word of the Day. "Turn to page twenty-three in your math books," said Mr. Cooper. Ugh. I hate math. When I grow up, I'm going to be a professional skateboarder. I won't need to know math. I'll need to know how to do a kickflip. Why don't they teach that in school? But it must have been my lucky day. Before I could open my math book, an announcement came over the loudspeaker. "Grades K through five, please report to the all-porpoise room for a surprise assembly." YAY! (That's also YAY backward.)

Surprises are cool. Well, not all surprises. If I was walking down the street and a zombie jumped out from behind a tree and ate my brains, that would be a surprise. But it wouldn't be very cool. "Pringle up, everybody," Mr. Cooper said. We got in line and walked a million hundred miles to the all-porpoise room.* The whole school was in there. I had to sit between crybaby Emily and annoying Andrea, this girl with curly brown hair. "I'll be back in a few minutes," Mr. Cooper told us. He got up and went backstage behind the curtain. I noticed that a bunch of other teachers got out of their seats and went backstage too.

Hmmm, that was weird. "I bet the teachers are going to put on a play for us," said Andrea, clapping her hands. "I'm sure you're right," said Emily, who always thinks Andrea is right. But the teachers didn't put on a play for us. Instead, the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Mr. Klutz, our principal, walked into the all- porpoise room. Well, that's not the weird part. Mr. Klutz walks into the all-porpoise room