by Dan Gutman
I was about to put the Twinkie in my mouth when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.
“STOP!” a voice shouted.
It was Ms. Leakey! She came running full speed into the vomitorium like she was in the Olympics. She appeared out of nowhere! She must have a Twinkie detector or something.
“DROP THAT TWINKIE!” Ms. Leakey screamed as she grabbed my hand.
The Twinkie was an inch from my mouth.
“But I’m hungry!” I complained.
“Do you know what that thing is made of?” asked Ms. Leakey.
“Uh, golden sponge cake with creamy filling?”
“No!” she shouted. “Dextrose! Sodium acid pyrophosphate! Diglycerides! Polysorbate 60! Partially hydrogenated animal shortening! You want to put all those chemicals into your body?”
The Twinkie was still an inch from my mouth. I looked at it. Then I looked at Ms. Leakey. Then I looked at the Twinkie again. Then I looked at Ms. Leakey again.
“Eat it, A.J.,” whispered Ryan. “She can’t tell you what to do.”
“Don’t eat it, A.J.,” said Michael.
“Eat it, A.J.,” whispered Neil the nude kid.
“Don’t eat it, Arlo,” said Andrea.
I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I had to think fast. I was concentrating so hard that my brain hurt.
And then I leaned forward and took a bite of the Twinkie. Ms. Leakey grabbed my upper and lower teeth with her hands and tried to pull them apart.
“Spit out the Twinkie, A.J.!” she screamed. “Stop this junk food madness!”
“But I love sodium acid pyrophosphate!” I yelled.
I managed to swallow that bite of Twinkie, but Ms. Leakey grabbed the rest of it out of my lunch box. Then she jumped up on top of our table.
“Do you kids know that the average person eats fifty pounds of cookies and cake every year?” she shouted so everybody in the vomitorium could hear. “You eat eighteen pounds of candy! Five pounds of potato chips! A hundred pounds of sugar! No wonder today’s kids are so unhealthy!”
Ms. Leakey jumped down from the table and grabbed one of the big garbage cans we scrape our trays into. Then she started taking Ding Dongs and Yodels and cupcakes off kids’ trays and throwing them into the garbage can.
“Free yourselves from the shackles of sugar!” she shouted. “Put your junk food in here! Begin a new life for yourself! Join the sugar-free revolution!”
Some of the kids actually threw their junk food into the garbage can. What is their problem?
“Come, follow me, everyone!” Ms. Leakey yelled, pulling the garbage can behind her. She marched out the door of the vomitorium and started singing…
“Drink your milk every day
Eat carrots for your eyes
Build strong bodies every way
And get lots of exercise!”
Everybody followed Ms. Leakey out the door. She dragged the garbage can across the playground to the corner. There’s a big, green Dumpster there.
“This is where junk food belongs!” shouted Ms. Leakey. She picked the garbage can up over her head with superhuman strength and emptied it into the Dumpster.
“Throw it away! Throw it away!” kids were chanting.
It was horrible! What a waste of perfectly good junk food.
This was worse than TV Turnoff Week. It was the worst day of my life.
5
Being Frank
After lunch we went back to Mr. Granite’s class. He was talking about recycling paper when the school secretary, Mrs. Patty, made an announcement over the loudspeaker.
“Mr. Granite, please send A.J. to Ms. Leakey’s office.”
“Oooooooooooh, A.J.’s in trouble!” said Ryan.
“I told you not to eat that Twinkie, dude,” said Michael.
“Maybe Arlo will get kicked out of school!” said Andrea.
She was rubbing her hands together. That’s what people do when they want something really badly. Why can’t a truck full of Twinkies fall on Andrea’s head?
I didn’t want to go to Ms. Leakey’s office. You know where I wanted to go? Antarctica. I wanted to run away and live with the penguins. Penguins are cool. Nobody tells penguins they can’t eat Twinkies.
I walked really slowly down the hall.* When I opened the door to Ms. Leakey’s office, she wasn’t in there. I looked around. It was a weird office. There was a treadmill, an organ, a bunch of plants, a giant metal box that looked like a coffin, a hot tub, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling!
Suddenly, the strangest thing in the history of the world happened. That giant box opened up, and a monster popped out!
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!” I screamed.
The monster pulled a mask off its face.
It wasn’t a monster after all. It was Ms. Leakey!
“Hi, A.J.!” she said.
“Why were you lying in a metal box with a mask on your face?” I asked.
“Oh, this is my hyperbaric chamber,” she said. “I was breathing pure oxygen. It’s good for the lungs.”
“A hyper-what?” I asked. “Where do you get one of those things?”
“From Rent-A-Hyperbaric Chamber,” she said. “You can rent anything.”
I looked at the row of plants under the window.
“Why do you have a farm in your office?” I asked.
“I grow all my own food,” she told me. “It’s organic.”
I guess that means she plays the organ while her food grows. That’s weird.
“What’s with the hot tub?” I asked.
“It’s not a hot tub,” Ms. Leakey told me. “It’s an endless pool. I swim laps in it.”
“Really short laps, huh?” I said.
“The endless pool has a current, like a river,” Ms. Leakey told me. “The water shoots past you so you swim in one place. You can swim forever.”
That made no sense at all. Who wants to swim forever without going anywhere?
Ms. Leakey got up out of her weird box.
“Would you like some trail mix, A.J.?” she said, holding out a bag to me.
I looked inside the bag. The stuff looked gross.
“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t want to eat trail.”
“It’s nuts and fruits and berries,” said Ms. Leakey. “All natural things. Trail mix is good for you.”
“That’s why I don’t want to eat it.”
“A.J.,” Ms. Leakey said, “can I be frank with you?”
“You can call yourself whatever you want, Frank,” I told her.
“I’m concerned about your diet,” she said. “Tell me, are you getting three square meals a day at home?”
“Well, sometimes my meals are round, Frank,” I told her. “Like when we have pizza, or pancakes.”
Ms. Leakey just shook her head sadly.
“Why do you have a punching bag in here?” I asked her.
“Eating junk food makes kids frustrated,” she told me. “It helps if they punch the bag. It’s good exercise, too.”
“Hitting stuff is fun,” I agreed.
“Would you like to try it, A.J.?”
“Sure.”
Ms. Leakey got a pair of boxing gloves from her closet and put them on me.
“Okay, hit that bag, A.J.!” she said.
I hit the bag. It felt good.
“Hit it again, A.J.” Ms. Leakey yelled. “Harder!”
I punched the bag some more, as hard as I could.
“Punch out fat, A.J.!” shouted Ms. Leakey. “Punch out sugar!”
I started dancing around the bag like a boxer, punching it, kicking it, ramming it, slamming it. It was fun! That’s when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.
A hole opened up in the punching bag. And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years what fell out of the hole.
I’m not gonna tell you.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
&nbs
p; It was candy! Candy and cookies and popcorn and all kinds of treats fell out! The punching bag was like a big piñata!
This was the greatest day of my life! I got down on my knees and started scooping up the candy. But I couldn’t pick it up because of the boxing gloves.
“STOP!” Ms. Leakey shouted. “That candy isn’t for eating! It’s for punching!”
“But I want to eat it!” I begged. “I love candy!”
Ms. Leakey took the boxing gloves off me and walked me back down the hallway.
“A.J.,” she said when we got to Mr. Granite’s room, “you are going to be my special project this year. You’re a student leader. The other kids want to do what you do. If I can get you to eat healthy, I think everyone else will follow. Will you at least try to eat better?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”
“Good,” she replied. “I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you to make sure you do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go do my crunches.”
“You’re going to eat breakfast cereal, Frank?” I called after her.
But she didn’t hear me. She had already run away.
6
Meet Mr. Slug
The next day was Friday. After we pledged the allegiance, it was time for science class. Our science teacher is Mr. Docker. He has a car that runs on potatoes. Mr. Docker is off his rocker.
When we got to the science room, Mr. Docker was talking to a guy I never saw before.
“I’d like you to meet Mr. Harrison,” Mr. Docker told us. “He’s the new tech guy for our school.”
“Tech guy?” we all asked. “What’s a tech guy?”
“I fix things that are broken,” said Mr. Harrison. “Computers, copy machines, telephones. I build things, too.”
Mr. Harrison was tall and skinny. He had weird hair and one of those plastic pocket protectors on his shirt with a bunch of pens sticking out of it. His pants were too short. What a nerd!
“Mr. Harrison and I built something together,” said Mr. Docker.
Mr. Harrison took a remote control out of his pocket and pushed a button. And you’ll never believe what happened next. A robot came walking out of the closet!
“We want to introduce you to Mr. Slug,” said Mr. Docker.
Mr. Slug walked to the front of the class, bumping into a few desks along the way. He didn’t look like any robot I ever saw. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a can of beer in one hand, and a bag of potato chips in his other hand. His eyes were crossed. Mr. Slug was a mess.
“You shouldn’t have cigarettes and beer in school,” said Andrea. “It’s a bad influence on children.”
“Yes, we know,” said Mr. Docker. “Ms. Leakey inspired us to build Mr. Slug. We wanted to show what happens to people who smoke and drink and eat poorly.”
“Does Mr. Slug talk?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Mr. Harrison. “Mr. Slug, how…are…you…feeling…today?”
Mr. Slug had a speaker on the side of his head. He made a sound like a cough. Then he coughed again. Then he had a coughing fit.
“OH…I…FEEL…LOUSY,” Mr. Slug said in a computery voice. “I…AM…SO…TIRED. NEED…TO…LIE…DOWN. WHAT…DAY…IS…IT?”
Mr. Slug stumbled around the front of the room. Then he let out a burp.
“He doesn’t sound very good,” I said. “He sounds like he’s gonna die.”
“Does Mr. Slug run on batteries?” asked Michael.
“No,” said Mr. Docker. “He runs on potatoes.”
That figured.
“Check this out,” said Mr. Harrison.
He opened a door in Mr. Slug’s chest. You could look right into his body and see his insides. It was cool.
“Here’s Mr. Slug’s heart,” said Mr. Harrison, “and here are his lungs. See how black they are? That’s what happens when you smoke cigarettes.”
Mr. Slug stumbled around the front of the room some more and then bumped into the whiteboard.
“OH…MY…HEAD.” Mr. Slug moaned.
“So,” said Mr. Docker. “Did you kids learn anything from Mr. Slug?”
“Yeah,” I said, “robots are cool!”
7
Fast Food
When I came home from school on Friday, my mom dumped the stuff from my backpack on the kitchen table like always. A piece of paper flew out….
* * *
Come to the grand opening of…
McLeakey’s
Fast, healthy food for fast, healthy lives!
$10 off with this coupon
And kids eat FREE!
* * *
“Ms. Leakey must have opened her own restaurant,” my mom said. “We should go there for dinner tonight.”
“What kind of a restaurant is it?” I asked suspiciously.
“The coupon says it’s fast food,” my mom said.
Fast food? I love fast food!
When my dad came home from work, we all piled into the car to go to Ms. Leakey’s new restaurant. There was a big sign out front:
McLeakey’s
My dad pulled the car up to the drive-through window.* There was a big clown face with a hole where his mouth should be next to the window.
“May I take your order?” asked the clown face.
“Tell the clown what you want, A.J.,” said my dad.
“I’ll have a hamburger,” I said.
“You should avoid eating too much red meat,” the clown face said. “It has a lot of fat in it.”
“Can I get a hot dog?” I asked.
“Are you crazy?” said the clown face. “Do you have any idea what they put in hot dogs? Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“How about some chicken nuggets?” I asked.
“Don’t even think about it!” said the clown face.
I slapped my head and looked in the window to check out the menu. It was hard to read the letters. I noticed there was a tree in the middle of the restaurant. That was weird.
“Well, what do you have?” I asked.
“We have broccoli burgers, meatless meatballs, vegetarian ribs, McMelon, ten kinds of tofu….”
“Toe food!” I said. “I’m not eating food made from toes.”
“Well, one of the kinds of tofu is nofu,” said the clown face.
“What’s that?” my dad asked.
“That’s tofu with no toes in it,” said the clown face.
“What do you have to drink?” I asked.
“Protein shakes, soy shakes, vitamin shakes, wheat grass shakes…”
“Can I just get a soda?” I asked.
“Are you out of your mind?” asked the clown face. “That stuff’ll kill ya! One can of soda contains ten packets of sugar in it. You might as well just eat poison. How about a bowl of steam? It’s ninety-nine cents.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“Me neither,” said my sister, Amy.
“Oh, and we have apples, too,” said the clown face.
“We’ll just have two apples,” said my dad.
“Coming right up,” said the clown face. “That will be one dollar. Pull up to the next window.”
My dad drove up to the next window. There was a guy wearing a paper hat. My dad gave him a dollar bill. The guy reached behind him and pulled two apples off the tree that was in the middle of the restaurant. He tossed them to my dad.
“See, I told you it was fast food,” said my mom.
McLeakey’s is the weirdest restaurant in the history of the world.
8
Sweets for the Sweet
My mom always goes grocery shopping on Saturday. And she always tries to get me to come along.
“A.J., let’s go grocery shopping,” she said.
“No thanks.”
“Come on, A.J.,” she said. “I’ll let you push the cart.”
“Oh, man, I want to watch TV, Mom.”
“I’ll buy you a treat,” my mom said. “Sweets for the sweet!”
A treat! The la
st time I tasted anything sweet, it was that Twinkie that Ms. Leakey tried to grab out of my mouth. I hadn’t had candy or cookies in so long, I hardly remembered what they tasted like.
“Let’s go!” I told my mom.
We drove to the supermarket. My mom parked the car and got out her shopping list and coupons. I went to get a cart and pushed it through the magic doors that open all by themselves. Those doors are cool.
“Can I get my treat now, Mom?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she told me. “First we have to do our shopping.”
Bummer in the summer! Shopping is way overrated. I don’t know if you ever went grocery shopping with your mom or dad, but it is the most boring thing in the history of the world. We had to go up and down every aisle of the supermarket. I thought I was gonna die. All I wanted was my treat.
When my mom buys a melon, she acts like she’s buying a house. She has to feel each melon. She has to smell each melon. Then she has to shake each melon and listen to it. What is her problem?
“It’s just a melon!” I said. “They’re all the same.”
“I have to find the perfect melon,” she said.
I hate melon.
Finally, after a million hundred hours, she found the perfect melon. We were finished grocery shopping.
“So, what treat do you want, A.J.?” my mom asked.
I had been thinking about it the whole time we were shopping. At first I wanted an ice-cream pop. But I decided that an ice-cream pop wouldn’t last very long. Then I wanted a Devil Dog. But they come in boxes of eight, and I knew my mom would say I could only get one treat.
Then I saw something at the end of the candy aisle. It was a giant box filled to the brim with candy. Just about every kind of candy in the world was in there. I led my mom over to it.
“Okay, you can have one treat, A.J.,” my mom said. “Just one. I’ll get in line. You choose your treat and meet me in the checkout line.”
