5. Smell-O-Vision

5 Smell-O-Vision Miss Banks laughed her head off after she tricked the whole class into walking around the woods, flapping our arms, and calling out "Sloof Lirpa" over and over again. She even shot a video of us on her cell phone. I bet she's going to show it to the teachers in the teachers' lounge. Miss Daisy, our second-grade teacher,

was weird. Mr. Granite and Mr. Cooper, our third-grade teachers, were weird too. But now that I'm older and wiser and in fourth grade, I'm beginning to think Miss Banks is the weirdest teacher of all of them. "Before we move on to math," she announced, "who wants gum?" "I do!" "I do!" "I do!" In case you were wondering, everybody said they wanted gum. To be honest, I'm not a big gum fan. Gum is okay, but it loses its flavor and tastes yucky after five minutes. Then you have to keep this tasteless ball of gunk in your mouth until you can find a garbage can. But I said "I do" anyway when Miss Banks offered us gum. Why? Because teachers never give us gum! They're always telling us to spit out our gum. "Do you have any Oreos?" I asked. "I'm

not a big gum fan." "No," said Miss Banks. "I just have gum." She brought around a plate with a bunch of pieces of gum on it, and they were all different colors. I picked a green piece and popped it in my mouth. Yuck! It tasted awful. "This isn't gum!" shouted Ryan. "It's Play-Doh!"* "Ugh! Gross," I shouted. "It's terrible!" "Oops!" said Miss Banks. "My mistake! Aha-ha! Time is fun when you're having flies!" What did that mean? I can't believe I fell for another one of Miss Banks's pranks! I should have known better and refused to eat the gum. That's it. I promised myself that I would never ever eat anything else that Miss Banks offered me.

"What are we going to learn in math this year?" asked Miss I-Want-to-Know- Everything. "Oh, we're going to learn about percentages and fractions and decimals and three-digit multiplication and blah blah blah blah..." Zzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry. I dozed off there for a minute. It's hard to keep my eyes open when anyone is talking about math. "But today I have a special surprise for

you," said Miss Banks. Uh-oh. I could only imagine what kind of surprise she was going to pull on us. I was expecting the worst. But Miss Banks opened a big box and pulled out a bunch of laptop computers. She handed one to each of us. "These are called Domebooks," she told us. "All fourth graders in the district get them." "Are they free?" asked Emily. "Yes," said Miss Banks. "Just take good care of your Domebook and give it back at the end of the school year." Cool! I always wanted my own laptop so I could play video games on school time. "These laptops are not for playing video games on school time," Miss Banks warned us. "We're going to use them for lots of subjects, including math. In fourth grade, you're going to learn about mixed numbers and blah blah blah blah..."

She went on like that for a million hundred hours. I thought I was gonna die from old age. Finally, she told us how to turn on our Domebooks. "These are very advanced laptops," Miss Banks explained. "They have a built- in app that produces smells to go with certain numbers. Like when you press the number one key, the screen gives off a smell like an apple. And when you press the number two key, it smells like strawberry. It's called Smell-O-Vision, and it's going to help you learn math." I never heard of laptops giving off smells. But I guess it could be possible. They're doing amazing things with computers these days. "Go ahead," said Miss Banks. "Try it." We all started pressing the keys on our Domebooks to see what smells came out. "I think I smell it!" said Andrea. "It's... cinnamon!" "Me too!" said Emily, who smells