Mr. Jack Is a Maniac! (4 page)

After about a million hundred minutes, an announcement came over the loudspeaker. Our class had to go down to the gym again for another session with Mr. Jack. I didn't want to go, but I knew that I had to. If I said I didn't feel well or made up some other excuse, everybody would know it was just because I didn't want Andrea to kick my butt again.

We walked to the gym in single file. In the middle of the gym floor was a machine. It looked sort of like a big vacuum cleaner or something.

“What's that, Mr. Jack?” asked Neil the nude kid.

“Oh, you'll see,” Mr. Jack replied. “Let's get down to business. I want the whole class to stand on the blue line.”

We all went over to the blue line. I stood between Ryan and Michael. Mr. Jack went over to the machine in the middle of the gym.

“I don't have a good feeling about this,” Ryan whispered to me.

“Me neither.”

“Now, the best way to defend yourself in a fight is to not get into the fight in the first place,” said Mr. Jack. “Right?”

“Right!” we all said. When grown-ups say “Right?” you should always answer “Right!” That's the first rule of being a kid.

“So the key to self-defense is to avoid hand-to-hand combat,” said Mr. Jack. “Right?”

“Right!”

“Sometimes you have to be quick on your feet. Right?”

“Right!”

“You have to get out of the way. Right?”

“Right!”

Mr. Jack flipped a switch on the machine. It started making a whirring sound.

“So let's see how good you are at getting out of the way,” Mr. Jack said.

He pushed a button on the machine, and you'll never believe in a million hundred years what came shooting out of it.

Ping-Pong balls!

And they were coming directly at
us
!

“Watch out!” Alexia shouted.

Ping-Pong balls were flying
everywhere
. Everybody was yelling and screaming and freaking out.

“Why are you shooting Ping-Pong balls at us?” shouted Andrea.

“To see how good you are at getting out of the way!” shouted Mr. Jack. “Stay on the blue line! Try not to get hit!”

“Ow! He got me!” screamed Emily after a Ping-Pong ball bounced off her head.

“If you get hit, you're out of the game,” Mr. Jack shouted. “Go sit on the side.”

Emily started crying, and she went running out of the gym. What a crybaby.

Mr. Jack moved the Ping-Pong machine back and forth so the balls sprayed across the whole class.

“Duck! Dive! Dip! Dodge!” he yelled, with a crazy look in his eyes. “Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.”

What?!
Mr. Jack is a maniac!

We were all diving out of the way, but Ryan got hit on the leg. He was out. Then Michael got hit on the arm. He was out. Alexia got hit in the back. She was out. One by one, kids were getting nailed with Ping-Pong balls and going off to sit on the side of the gym.

“Aha-ha-ha!” yelled Mr. Jack after Neil the nude kid got hit in the chest. “Another one bites the dust!”

I was diving left and right and jumping up and down like crazy. There was only one other kid left on the blue line.

Andrea
.

Mr. Jack stopped for a minute to reload the Ping-Pong ball machine. I was breathing really hard.

“Beat him again, Andrea!” shouted one of the girls.

“You can do it, A.J.!” shouted one of the boys.

“Only two kids left,” Mr. Jack said excitedly. “Who will be the last one standing?”

“I'd just like to say that I don't approve of this violence,” Andrea said. “It's inappropriate for children.”

“What do you have against violins?” I asked.

Mr. Jack pushed the button again, and Ping-Pong balls started flying at Andrea and me, faster than ever. I dove to my left. I dove to my right. I jumped up in the air. Then I heard a
pop
as a Ping-Pong ball hit Andrea on her shoulder.

“Ouch!” she yelled. “That
hurt
!”

Everybody started cheering. Mr. Jack turned off the machine.

“You are The Man, A.J.!” Ryan shouted.

Everybody in the class came over and told me how awesome I was. Andrea gave me a hug and said, “You're my hero, Arlo!” Mr. Jack gave me a certificate that said I was a First-Class Ping-Pong Ball Avoider.

It was the greatest day of my life.

Mr. Jack rolled the Ping-Pong ball machine over to the corner of the gym. He told us to sit on the floor.

“Okay,” he said, “the next thing you kids need to learn is
intimidation
. That's a pretty big word—five syllables. Does anybody know what it means?”

“A syllable is a part of a word,” I said.

“No, dumbhead!” Michael said. “He wants to know what ‘intimidation' means.”

“I knew that,” I lied.

Andrea waved her hand in the air like she was trying to flag down a helicopter. What a brownnoser. So of course Mr. Jack called on her.

“When you intimidate somebody, you scare them,” Andrea said, looking all proud of herself.

“That's right,” Mr. Jack said.
*

Well, sure it was right. Andrea got one of those electronic book things for her birthday, so now she can look up words all the time to show everybody how smart she is. What is her problem? Why can't a truck full of electronic books fall on Andrea's head?

“There are many ways to intimidate an attacker,” Mr. Jack told us. “First, you need to know how to scream. Andrea, I heard you scream earlier. Would you please demonstrate?”

“Eeee-yah!”
screamed Andrea. I covered my ears.

“Very good,” said Mr. Jack.
“Eeee-yah!
It's even more intimidating if lots of people scream as a team. Let's hear the rest of you.”

“Eeee-yah!”
we all screamed.

“That wouldn't intimidate a fly,” Mr. Jack said. “Louder!”

“Eeee-yah!”
we all shrieked our heads off.

“Much better,” said Mr. Jack. “That's teamwork! Next, you need to make yourself look
big
.”

“How can we be any bigger than we are?” asked Alexia.

“Like this,” Mr. Jack said. He raised his hands in the air and spread his legs apart. He actually looked bigger!

“Eeee-yah!”
screamed Mr. Jack.

“I'm intimidated,” said Emily, who is intimidated by everything.

“If an attacker thinks you're tough, he'll think twice about bothering you,” Mr. Jack said. “Take off your jacket and wave it around in the air. You need to be as obnoxious as possible.”

“That should be easy for you,
Arlo
,” said Andrea. “You can be obnoxious without even trying.”

“Your
face
is obnoxious,” I told Andrea.

“Oh, snap!” said Ryan.

“If you're
really
obnoxious,” Mr. Jack told us, “an attacker will think you're crazy and leave you alone. Watch . . .”

Mr. Jack started screaming
“Eeee-yah!”
and stomping around and waving his jacket and whistling.

And you'll never believe who walked into the door at that moment.

Nobody! It would hurt if you walked into a door. But you'll never believe who walked in the door
way
.

It was Mr. Klutz!

He watched Mr. Jack screaming
“Eeee-yah!”
and stomping around and waving his jacket and whistling. Then Mr. Klutz shook his head, rubbed his forehead with his fingers, and left.

“See?” Mr. Jack said. “Mr. Klutz thinks I'm crazy, so he left me alone. That's what I call intimidation!”

Mr. Jack is weird.

After we learned how to be intimidating, it was time for lunch and recess. Then we went back to our regular class.

“Let's pick up where we started this morning,” Mr. Granite told us. “Turn to page twenty-three in your—”

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. At that moment, Mr. Jack suddenly ran into our classroom at full speed.

“Eeee-yah!”
he screamed as he leaped up on Mr. Granite's desk.

Everybody freaked out.

“Mr. Jack!” said Mr. Granite. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”

That's grown-up talk for “What are
you
doing here?”

“You never know when you might get attacked,” said Mr. Jack. “Always be ready for the unexpected.”

“But if something is unexpected,” asked Andrea, “how can we be ready for it?”

For the first time in the history of the world, I agreed with Andrea.

“Yeah,” I said. “If we're ready for it, it won't be unexpected.”

Mr. Jack wasn't listening. He was looking at the stuff on Mr. Granite's desk. Then he picked up a glue stick and started waving it around.

“What would you do if I attacked you right
now
?” he shouted.

“With a glue stick?” asked Ryan.
*

“Are you going to glue us to death?” asked Neil the nude kid.

“
Anything
can be a weapon!” shouted Mr. Jack as he leaped off Mr. Granite's desk and shoved the glue stick in Neil's face. “Someone could attack you with cotton balls. Someone could attack you with Q-tips! Always expect the unexpected!”

At that moment, something even
more
unexpected happened. Our school lunch lady, Ms. LaGrange, came into the classroom. She's from France. Ms. LaGrange was wheeling a cart with a big block of ice on it.

“Bonjour!”
said Ms. LaGrange. “Did somebody ask for a big block of ice?”

“Yes, leave it right there,” Mr. Jack told her.

“What's the big block of ice for?” asked Alexia.

“To defend yourself, you need to be tough,” Mr. Jack said. “And to show you how tough I am, I will now break this block of ice in half . . . with my head.”

WHAT?!

Mr. Jack stood in front of the big block of ice.