3. Pop Quiz

3 Pop Quiz "Time for a pop quiz!" announced Miss Banks. Ugh. I hate pop quizzes. Do they have pop quizzes at your school? If they don't, you're lucky. A pop quiz is when your teacher gives you a test for no reason, and with no warning. You can't study for it. You don't know what's going to be on it.

The teacher can ask you anything. Miss Banks told us to take out a pencil as she passed around a sheet of paper to each of us. "This will be easy," she told us. "The instructions are simple. There are ten questions. Read the quiz all the way through before answering the first question. Go!" I looked at the sheet. The first question said... 1. What's your name? Write it at the top of this sheet. I wrote my name at the top of the sheet and moved on to... 2. Add up these numbers: 8+4+10+15 +99=? It was too hard to do the math in my head. "Can we use scrap paper?" I asked Miss Banks. "If you feel you need to," she replied. I took out a piece of scrap paper and

started writing the numbers down. Then I added them up. It came to 136. I wrote that down. I looked around. Everybody was working on the math problem. Well, everybody except Andrea. She was just sitting there with her hands folded, like she was finished already. How could she be done so quickly? I better work faster. I moved on to... 3. Circle every T on this page. I circled every T on the page. That was easy. I moved on to number four... 4. What time is it when the big hand is on four and the little hand is on eleven? I drew a clock on my scrap paper and put in the hands. It was twenty minutes after eleven. I wrote that down and peeked around to see how everybody else was doing. Emily and Alexia were sitting there with their hands folded. Man, girls work fast! I moved on to... 5. Silently recite the first six words of the

Gettysburg Address. Oh, I knew that one: "Four score and seven years ago." I moved on to... 6. Get up, walk around your desk in a circle, and then sit down. That's a weird thing to ask on a pop quiz. But what do I know? Maybe things are different in fourth grade. I got up, walked around my desk, and sat down. So did Ryan, Michael, and Neil. I moved on to... 7. Write your name backward. I wrote my name backward. Then I moved on to... 8. Stand up and sing a line from "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." I got up and sang, "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O." Michael got up and sang, "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O." I looked around. Ryan and Neil were sitting there with their hands folded. How come they didn't get up and sing? Maybe

they did it and I didn't notice. I moved on to... 9. Cluck like a chicken while standing on one foot. "Bok! Bok! Bok!" I said, standing on one foot. I looked around. Nobody else was standing on one foot. Nobody else was clucking. "Hey, you guys! Why aren't you doing

it?" I asked. They didn't answer. Then I looked at the last question on the bottom of the page... 10. Do not answer any of the questions or complete any of the tasks on this pop quiz. Put down your pencil and sit with your hands folded. Don't say anything to anybody. WHAT?! I looked at Andrea. She was sitting there with her hands folded and a big smile on her face. Ryan had his hands folded. Alexia had her hands folded. Michael had his hands folded. Emily had her hands folded. Neil had his hands folded. Everybody except me was sitting there with their hands folded. Then they all started cracking up, even Miss Banks. "Hey, what's going on?" I asked. "It was a fake pop quiz, dumbhead!" Andrea said. "Miss Banks told us to read