Mr. Hynde Is Out of His Mind! (2 page)

First this weird purple smoke started pouring out on the floor in the front of the music room. Then the sound of drums started pounding out of a boom box on Mr. Loring's desk. Then the lights went out and these laser beams started shooting around the music room in all
different colors. It was cool!

Suddenly two men ran into the room and started dancing around. They were wearing football jerseys and baseball caps and holding microphones.

“Ooh, hats aren't allowed in school,” I heard Andrea say to Emily. “Those men are going to get in trouble.”

One of the guys started clapping his hands over his head to the drumbeat. The other one yelled into his microphone.

“Are you ready for some music class?” the guy screamed.

We all looked at one another. We're not supposed to yell in school. But Miss Daisy
wasn't there, so I figured it was okay.

“Yeah!” I yelled.

“I SAID, ‘ARE YOU READY FOR SOME MUSIC CLASS?'” the guy repeated.

“Yeah!” everybody yelled.

“Are you ready to get down?” the guy screamed.

“We're already down!” somebody yelled.

“And now, second graders…appearing live and in person at Ella Mentry School…is the one…the only…Jam Master Hynde, the One-Man Funky Groove Machine! Give it up, y'all! 'Cause Mr. Hynde is in the house!”

The two guys ran out the door. The
drums got louder. The lights got brighter. Andrea and Emily put their hands over their ears.

That's when Mr. Hynde ran in the door. He was a lot younger than Mr. Loring. He had on a baseball cap too, and he was wearing this big purple cape with sequins all over it. He had on sunglasses, too, even though he was inside. I guess that was to protect his eyes from the laser beams.

“Ooh, he's really cute!” all the girls said.

“Put your hands together!” Mr. Hynde screamed. “I said, ‘PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER!'”

We all started clapping. Mr. Hynde
danced around awhile, and then he threw off his purple cape and started rapping to the beat:

Mr. Hynde got down on the floor and started spinning around on his back like a top. Then he started spinning on his head!

It was cool.

Finally the music and lasers stopped, and the regular lights came back on. Mr. Hynde took off his sunglasses and put on regular glasses. He was panting like a dog after a hard game of fetch.

Me and Ryan and Michael got up and gave him a standing ovation, and the rest of the class joined in too.

Well, everybody except for Andrea and Emily. They just sat there, with their mouths open and their eyes all big like they just saw an alien spaceship or something.

“Yo, what up, homeys?” asked Mr. Hynde.

“Are you our new music teacher?” asked Michael.

“True that!” said Mr. Hynde. “What do you think I am, brother, your dentist? Welcome to music, second grade! I'm here to rock your world.”

“I liked Mr. Loring,” Andrea whined.

Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on her! Finally there was something at school that Andrea didn't like.

Anything Andrea doesn't like, I like. And anything Andrea likes, I don't like. We never agree on anything. I didn't even like rap music very much, but I think I'm gonna like it now that I know Andrea hates it.

Andrea and Emily started in brownnosing Mr. Hynde right away. They were trying to act all cute.

“What musical instruments do you play, Mr. Hynde?” asked Andrea.

“Sister, I play turntable,” Mr. Hynde said.

Then he took one of those big old black records that my parents used to listen to in ancient times. He put it on a record player. Then he started sliding the
record back and forth while he rubbed the needle against it. These weird sounds came out of the boom box. It was cool.

“Scratching records will ruin them,” Andrea said. “You should hold records by the edges so they don't get scratched.”

“Can you possibly be any more boring?” I asked her.

“Mr. Hynde,” asked Emily, “do you know how to sing the doe a deer song? That's my favorite song.”

“No problemo, sister,” said Mr. Hynde. And then he started rapping again:

Me and Ryan and Michael gave Mr. Hynde another standing ovation.

“That's not doe a deer!” Emily complained. “That's a sad song about a deer that died!”

She looked like she was going to cry, like always.

“Chill, sister,” said Mr. Hynde. “It's just a song.”

“Yeah, chill,” I told Emily.

Andrea said she knew the real doe a deer song, and she started singing it. But she only got up to the part about the drop of golden sun when Mr. Hynde held up his hand like a police officer telling you to stop your car.

“Whoa, that stuff is old school, sister,” he told Andrea. “It's so yesterday.”

“I like Mr. Hynde's doe a deer song better,” I said.

“Me too!” agreed most of the other kids.

“Aren't we going to learn about all the great composers,” Andrea whined, “like Beethoven and Mozart and Gershwin and Irving Berlin?”

“Those dudes didn't boogie,” said Mr.
Hynde. “I never listen to that stuff.
This
year in music class I'm gonna teach you how to get down and get your swerve on! We're gonna bust a move!”

“I don't think I'm going to like music class this year,” Andrea whispered to Emily with a big worried face.

I think I'm gonna
love
music class this year!

“Mr. Hynde is the coolest teacher in the history of the world,” I told the guys.

We were sitting around the vomitorium eating lunch. I traded my peach to Ryan for his cookies because food that has hair on it is disgusting. Ryan will eat anything, though. Once he even ate a bug.

“He doesn't act like a music teacher at all,” said Michael.

“The best part is, we'll never have to sing that dumb cookie jar song again!” Ryan said. We all did a big high five over that.

At the next table, I could hear Andrea and Emily moaning and complaining about Mr. Hynde.

“He's really cute, and he's a pretty good singer,” Emily said. “But he doesn't even play any musical instruments. How can you be a music teacher when you don't play a musical instrument?”

“He has no right to be teaching music,” Andrea said. “I'm going to ask my mom to
talk to Principal Klutz. Maybe she can get Mr. Hynde fired.”

Me and Michael and Ryan turned around at that.

“What?!” we shouted.

“Mr. Hynde is a terrible music teacher,” Andrea said. “My mom is the PTA vice president, and she said that if enough parents complain about a teacher, they can get the teacher fired.”

It figured that the school finally replaced that old dinosaur Mr. Loring with somebody cool and Andrea would start complaining. What is her problem?

“I think Mr. Hynde is incompetent,” Andrea said.

“He wears diapers?” I asked.

“Not in
con
tinent, dumbhead!” Andrea said. “In
com
petent! It means he doesn't do a good job.”

“Yeah,” said Emily.

That Emily agrees with everything Andrea says. She's so annoying. I decided to yank her crank.

“Maybe Mr. Hynde isn't a music teacher at all,” I told her. “Did you ever think of that?”

“What do you mean?” Emily asked.

“I mean maybe Mr. Loring wasn't fired. Maybe Mr. Hynde kidnapped him and stuffed him in a piano and dumped it in the river. Stuff like that happens all the time, you know.”

Emily looked worried, like I wasn't even kidding. That girl will fall for anything.

“We've got to
do
something!” Emily said. Then she went running out of the vomitorium.

Emily is weird.

If Andrea and her mother got Mr. Hynde fired, it would be a horrible disaster. I was determined to stop them. But in the meantime, I had another problem to worry about.

Multiplication.

We were just starting to learn about
multiplication, and I didn't get it. I understood how 2 plus 2 equals 4. But then how was it possible for 2
times
2 to equal 4 too? I mean, 3 plus 3 and 3
times
3 don't equal the same number. It just didn't make sense.

The way I looked at it, if 2 plus 2 equals 4, and 2 times 2 also equals 4, then addition and multiplication were the same thing. And if they were the same thing, why did we have to learn
both
of them? I was having a tough enough time with addition
and subtraction before this multiplication stuff messed everything up.

I asked Miss Daisy to explain how 2 plus 2 and 2 times 2 can both equal 4.

“How should I know?” she replied. “I don't know anything about math.”

Miss Daisy is crazy!

“Everybody line up,” Miss Daisy said after we finished putting away our math books.

“Line up for what?”

“It's time for music with Mr. Hynde,” Miss Daisy said.

“Yippee!” shouted me and Michael and Ryan.

“Boo!” said Andrea and Emily.

“Andrea, I thought you loved music,” Miss Daisy said. “You've been playing piano ever since you were four.”

“She must be really tired,” I said. Nobody laughed at my joke again, but I didn't care. I'm going to keep telling that joke until somebody laughs.

“Mr. Hynde doesn't play music,” Andrea said. “He just makes noise.”

“Well, we have to go to music anyway,” said Miss Daisy.

Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea! I hate her.

We went to the music room in single file. This girl Annette was the line leader. Andrea and Emily were at the end of the
line, which was a first in the history of the world. They always want to get everywhere before anyone else.

The music room was empty. But suddenly Mr. Hynde swept in and threw off his cape.

“Should we sit like pretzels, Mr. Hynde?” somebody asked.

“No way, homeys,” Mr. Hynde said. “You sit for reading and writing and arithmetic. In music you get up and shake your booty! The only way to get down is to get up!”

Mr. Hynde jumped around like a lunatic, and so did we. It was cool.

“Okay, my little peeps,” Mr. Hynde said.
“Today we're gonna learn about percussion. Which one of you shorties can tell me what percussion is?”

I raised my hand and Mr. Hynde called on me.

“Percussion is when you say bad words,” I said.

“That's cussin', brother,” Mr. Hynde said. “Andrea?”

“Percussion is when one object hits against another object,” she said, all proud of herself.

“Word up, Andrea!” Mr. Hynde said.

Andrea thinks she knows everything. I'd like to percussion her with a stick.

“Listen up,” Mr. Hynde said. He picked
up two rulers from his desk and started hitting things with them. He hit his desk. He hit the chalkboard. He hit the window. He hit his coffee mug.

“You hear how each object makes a different sound?” Mr. Hynde asked.

“That's not music,” Andrea said. “It's just noise!”

“Oh, that's cold, girl!” Mr. Hynde said. “Sister, anything can be musical.”

Mr. Hynde started running around the room, drumming on everything in sight with the rulers. He's a good drummer! Then he put his foot inside a garbage can and started tap-dancing around the room while he kept whacking things with the
rulers. He's a good tap dancer, too.

It was getting noisy! Andrea and Emily put their hands over their ears. Mr. Hynde started making weird drumming sounds with his mouth while he was
whacking things with the rulers and tap-dancing with the garbage can on his foot.

It was cool. Everybody except for Andrea and Emily was dancing around. Mr. Hynde started hitting his butt on an empty desk while he was making weird drumming sounds with his mouth and whacking things with the rulers and tap-dancing with the garbage can.

Mr. Hynde is out of his mind!

He was doing all those things at the same time when suddenly, the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened.

The door to the music room opened. And who do you think walked in?

It was Mr. Klutz, the school principal!

“Oh, snap!” said Mr. Hynde.

Mr. Klutz is completely bald. I mean, he has no hair at all on his head.

Everything stopped. Mr. Hynde stood there like a statue. A statue with a garbage can on its foot. Everybody stopped dancing. There was no noise at all. We were all looking at Mr. Klutz as he stood in the doorway.

You should have been there. It was unbearable! We didn't know what to say. We didn't know what to do. I had to think fast.

Finally I said, “Mr. Hynde is teaching us cussin'.”

“Is that so?” Principal Klutz asked.

“Percussion,” said Mr. Hynde.

“Mr. Hynde is hitting things and making way too much noise,” said Andrea. “He calls that music.”

Principal Klutz walked over to Mr. Hynde.

“Is that true, Mr. Hynde?” asked Principal Klutz.

Nobody said a word. Nobody made a sound. I thought I was gonna die.

“True that, sir, I'm afraid it is,” said Mr. Hynde. He took his foot out of the garbage can.

“He's damaging school property and causing a disturbance,” said Andrea. “Are
you going to fire him?” She had this evil smile on her face.

All the kids looked at Mr. Klutz. Mr. Klutz looked at Mr. Hynde. Mr. Hynde looked at Mr. Klutz. And then Mr. Klutz did the most amazing thing in the history of the world. He started rapping:

Then Mr. Klutz did a little dance and spun on the floor on his back.

Mr. Klutz is nuts!

With Principal Klutz still sitting on the floor, Mr. Hynde came up behind him and started drumming the top of his bald head like it was a bongo.

It was amazing! You should have been there. It was almost even better than watching TV.

Everybody except Andrea and Emily started clapping. Mr. Klutz got up and said he had to go back to his office and do some important principal stuff.

“Please continue to, uh, get down and funky with your bad self,” said Mr. Klutz. “Peace out.”

And then he left.

You should have seen the look on Andrea's face when Mr. Hynde was playing bongos on our principal's head! I guess she's not going to get Mr. Hynde fired after all.

Ha-ha-ha. It was the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world.

I hate her.