7. There, There

7 There, There When we got to class the next day, we pledged the allegiance and did Word of the Day. Then Miss Banks did the weirdest thing in the history of the world. She started spinning around in circles, skipping around the room, climbing up onto the windowsill, and doing cartwheels.

"Miss Banks," asked Andrea, "what are you doing?" "I'm pretending to be an irrational number," she replied. "Get it? Time is fun when you're having flies!" Miss Banks is weird. "As I was saying yesterday," she continued, "blah blah blah blah blah blah..." She went on and on about irrational numbers. I thought I was going to die from old age. Finally, it was time for lunch, and then recess. Do you know what rotini is? It's this curly pasta. We have a cool slide on our playground that looks a lot like rotini. We call it the Rotini Slide. So it has the perfect name. We were all taking turns sliding down the Rotini Slide, and you'll never believe in a million hundred years who showed up out of nowhere. I'm not going to tell you. Okay, okay, I'll tell you.

It was Uncle Fred! It's true! A car pulled up to the playground; he stepped out and walked right over to us! "Uncle Fred!" we all shouted. "What are you doing here?" asked Michael. "Can I play with you kids?" he asked. Grown-ups never ask to play with us on the playground. Uncle Fred looked a little sad, and that made me feel sad too. "Sure, you can play with us," I told him.

该页暂无翻译

"Would you like to slide down the Rotini Slide?" Alexia asked him. "Yeah!" Uncle Fred said excitedly. He climbed up the ladder to the top of the Rotini Slide and slid down. "Wheeeee!" he yelled. "Look at me. I'm flying! Yippeeee!" It was a little weird. Grown-ups aren't supposed to slide down slides, and they never say "Yippeeee!" That's the first rule of being a grown-up. When he got to the bottom of the slide, Uncle Fred wanted to climb up and do it again, but Andrea grabbed him by his shoulders. "We need to talk, Uncle Fred," she said. "How old are you?" "I'm fifty years old," he replied. Fifty?! Wow, that's like half a century! "Shouldn't you be at home, Uncle Fred?" Andrea asked. "Or at the TV studio getting ready for the next episode of Funderama?"

"I don't like being at home or in the studio," Uncle Fred whined, a pout on his face. "I want to be here, playing with you kids." "Why don't you leave him alone, Andrea?" I asked. "He's not bothering anybody." "You're a fifty-year-old man!" Andrea told Uncle Fred. "You shouldn't be playing on a playground and acting like a little kid. Don't you think it's time for you to grow up?"*