Mr. Harrison Is Embarrassin'!

  My Weirder School #2

  Mr. Harrison Is Embarrassin’!

  Dan Gutman

  Pictures by

  Jim Paillot

  Dedication

  To Nathaniel Lewis

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - School for Cavemen

  Chapter 2 - Night of the Living Teachers

  Chapter 3 - Big Nose

  Chapter 4 - On the Fritz

  Chapter 5 - Mr. Harrison’s Invention

  Chapter 6 - The Truth About Mr. Harrison

  Chapter 7 - The Weirdest Thing in the History of the World

  Chapter 8 - Freaking Out

  Chapter 9 - The Search Party

  Chapter 10 - Digger

  Chapter 11 - I Don’t Want to Hold Your Hand

  Chapter 12 - Supersquirrel

  Notes

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  School for Cavemen

  My name is A.J. and I hate coffee.

  I do! Did you ever taste coffee? I tried it once and I thought I was gonna throw up.

  My parents drink coffee every day with breakfast. What’s up with that?

  “If I don’t get my cup of coffee in the morning,” my dad said, “I’m a mess.”

  “How can you drink that stuff?” I asked him. “It tastes like dirt.”

  “Well, it was just ground this morning,” he replied. And then he slapped his knee and bent over laughing even though he didn’t say anything funny.1

  I was thinking about it. There must be some chemical in the brain that gets activated when you become a grown-up. Then, suddenly, you start to drink coffee, eat vegetables, wear a tie, and go to craft fairs. There’s no other way to explain why grown-ups willingly do any of that stuff.

  I was walking to school with my friends Ryan, Michael, and Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes. These annoying girls—Andrea, Emily, and Alexia—were behind us as we climbed up the front steps. That’s when I saw this big sign . . .

  “Wow, I didn’t know it was the school’s birthday,” said Michael, who never ties his shoes.

  “We should give the school a party,” said Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food.

  “Schools don’t get birthday parties,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. “They’re not people.”

  “That’s right,” said Emily, who always agrees with everything Andrea says.

  “Fifty years!” Alexia said. “That’s a long time!”

  “Yeah,” I told everybody, “when the school first opened, the students were probably cavemen.”

  “I’ll bet they taught the kids reading, writing, and how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together,” said Neil.

  “And they didn’t have to learn history back then,” Ryan said, “because nothing happened yet!”

  Me and the guys laughed and high-fived each other. It was hilarious.

  “Boys!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes again.

  “Hey,” said Alexia, “back in those days, instead of buses, kids probably rode to school on dinosaurs.”

  I laughed and high-fived Alexia. She is pretty cool even though she’s a girl.

  Andrea put on her mean face.

  “The dinosaurs died millions of years ago, Alexia!” she said. “That was long before there were people.”

  “Can you possibly be any more boring?” Alexia asked Andrea.

  Wow! That’s what I was going to say!

  Andrea gave Alexia another mean face.

  Michael pulled open the front door of the school. That’s when we saw the strangest thing in the history of the world.

  But I’m not going to tell you what it was.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.

  The teachers were walking around like zombies! They all had their hands out in front of them and this dazed look in their eyes. Mr. Docker. Mrs. Cooney. Ms. Coco. Miss Holly. All of them! Some of the teachers were groaning, drooling, and bumping into the walls.

  “What’s the matter with the teachers?” Andrea asked.

  “This must be Act Like a Zombie Day,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re filming a horror movie,” suggested Ryan.

  “Are you okay?” Emily asked Mrs. Yonkers, the computer teacher, who was stumbling around like she was still asleep.

  Mrs. Yonkers just stared back with creepy horror movie eyes.

  “. . . must have coffee . . . ,” she muttered.

  “. . . need coffee . . . ,” groaned Mr. Macky, the reading specialist.

  “. . . will die without coffee . . . ,” mumbled Ms. Hannah, the art teacher.

  Grown-ups are weird.

  Chapter 2

  Night of the Living Teachers

  All the teachers were stumbling around like it was a scene out of Night of the Living Dead. It was cool. We all went into the front office to see what was going on.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Mrs. Patty, the school secretary.

  “Our coffee machine is on the fritz,” she said.

  “What’s a fritz?” I asked. “And why would you put a coffee machine on one of them? Maybe they should take the coffee machine off the fritz and it would work again.”

  “On the fritz means something is broken, Arlo,” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. She calls me by my real name because she knows I don’t like it.

  “Your face is on the fritz,” I told Andrea.

  “Fritz.” That’s a weird word.

  Suddenly, our principal, Mr. Klutz, came rushing in from his office. He has no hair at all. I mean none. Mr. Klutz looked like he would have been tearing his hair out, if he had any hair.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “If the teachers don’t get their coffee in the morning, we could have a disaster on our hands!”

  Teachers were wandering in and out of the office like monsters.

  “. . . must have coffee . . .”

  “. . . need coffee . . .”

  “. . . life is empty without coffee . . .”

  “. . . go to Starbucks . . .”

  Boy, grown-ups sure do like coffee. What is their problem?

  “We’ve got to do something!” shouted Emily, and she went running out of the office.

  “Where’s Miss Lazar?” asked Mr. Klutz. “She usually takes care of the coffee machine.”

  “It’s her day off,” said Mrs. Patty.

  Miss Lazar is the school custodian. Things always seem to go on the fritz when she has a day off.

  I thought the teachers were going to start a riot or something. But you’ll never believe who walked into the door at that moment.

  Nobody. If you walked into a door, it would hurt. But you’ll never believe who walked into the doorway.

  It was Mr. Harrison, the tech guy at our school. He fixes computers and laser printers and copy machines. He is really skinny, and he has blond hair.

  “Good morning, good morning!” Mr. Harrison said to everybody.

  He was holding a paper coffee cup. I guess he must have stopped off to buy coffee on the way to school. Some of the teachers saw his cup and surrounded him.

  “. . . must have coffee . . . ,” groaned Miss Laney, the speech teacher.

  Mr. Harrison leaned his head back to finish his coffee.

  “Ah, that hit the spot,” he said, throwing the cup in the garbage.

  Miss Laney reached into the garbage can, grabbed the cup, and tried to lick a few drops of coffee from it.

  “Maybe you can help us, Mr. Harrison,” said Mr. Klutz. “The coffee machine is broken.”

  “Yeah, it needs to get of
f the fritz,” I added.

  “Can you fix it?” Mr. Klutz asked. “If we don’t get some coffee soon, I’m afraid the teachers will be revolting.”

  “Some of the teachers are already revolting,” I said.

  “Leave it to me,” said Mr. Harrison. “I can fix anything. They don’t call me Fritz Harrison for nothing.”

  “Is Fritz really your name?” I asked.

  “No, it’s just my nickname.”

  “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you that.”

  A bunch of teachers gathered around to watch while Mr. Harrison examined the coffee machine.

  “It’s simple, really,” he said. “The water goes in this tube to the drip area. This switch sends electricity to a heating element, and blah blah blah sensors blah blah fuses to keep it from getting too hot blah blah blah one-way valve blah blah blah blah filtration system and blah blah blah . . .”

  Mr. Harrison went on like that for a million hundred minutes. He made it sound like the inside of a coffee machine was a rocket ship.

  “So, do you know what’s wrong with it?” asked Mr. Klutz.

  “Sure,” Mr. Harrison replied. “It’s not plugged in.”

  He plugged in the coffee machine, and it started making coffee right away. The teachers cheered and clapped him on the back.

  “Hooray for Mr. Harrison!” they yelled.

  “He fixed the coffee machine!”

  “He should get the Nobel Prize!”2

  “He’s our hero!”

  Chapter 3

  Big Nose

  After the teachers got their coffee, everything was back to normal. Or as normal as things ever get at Ella Mentry School.

  The bell rang, and we all rushed to Mr. Granite’s class. We pledged the allegiance, did Word of the Day, and had circle time. That’s when we all sit around in a circle, so it has the perfect name.

  “Okay, turn to page twenty-three in your math books,” said Mr. Granite.

  We’ve been working on page twenty-three in our math books for a million hundred days. But every time we get started, there seems to be an interruption. That’s fine with me, because math is boring.

  “Today we’re going to work on fractions,” said Mr. Granite. “Now, which one of you can tell me—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because at that very moment an announcement came over the loudspeaker.

  “Everyone, please report to the all-purpose room for an assembly,” said Mrs. Patty.

  “Yay!” me and the guys shouted. “No math!”

  “What?!” Mr. Granite moaned. “Nobody told me we were having an assembly.”

  He was mad, but I was happy because we got out of math again. I didn’t even mind that we had to walk a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room.

  I got a seat next to Ryan, and Alexia sat on my other side. Andrea and that crybaby Emily were in front of us.

  Mr. Klutz and our vice principal, Mrs. Jafee, got up on the stage. Mrs. Jafee made a peace sign with her fingers, which means “shut up.”

  “First of all, how about a big round of applause for Mr. Harrison?” said Mrs. Jafee. “He fixed the coffee machine.”

  Mr. Harrison took a bow. Everybody clapped in a circle and yelled “Hip hip hooray” until the teachers made the shut-up peace sign.

  “Students, I have big news,” announced Mr. Klutz.

  “Mr. Klutz has a big nose,” Alexia whispered in my ear.

  Hey, that’s what I was going to say!

  “Today is Ella Mentry School’s fiftieth birthday!” Mr. Klutz said.

  “Hip hip hooray!” everybody yelled.3

  “To help us celebrate, some special visitors are coming after lunch,” Mr. Klutz told us. “Mayor Hubble is going to be here. A newspaper reporter. And Channel 7 News is even coming to film the celebration.”

  “Are we gonna be on TV?” some girl shouted.

  “You betcha,” said Mrs. Jafee.

  “EEEEEEEEEEK! We’re gonna be on TV!”

  All the girls started screaming and freaking out.

  “We’re gonna be famous!”

  “It’s going to be like a reality TV show!”

  Girls are weird.

  “How do I look?” asked Andrea. “I need to comb my hair.”

  “You look beautiful,” said Emily. “How do I look?”

  “You look beautiful, too,” said Andrea.

  “You both look ugly,” I told them.

  Mr. Klutz made the shut-up peace sign again.

  “There will be one other special guest,” he said. “Ella Mentry: the lady our school was named after. Just like our school is celebrating its birthday, so is Mrs. Mentry. She is ninety years old today, and she’s going to celebrate right here with us. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Yes!” said all the girls.

  “No!” said all the boys.

  “There’s a reason why I called you all in here this morning,” Mr. Klutz told us. “Do you kids remember what happened the last time Ella Mentry visited our school?”

  How could I forget? It seemed like it was just yesterday. Our school had been named the cleanest school in the district, and Ella Mentry came to the vomitorium at lunchtime to give us the award.

  The only problem was, I shot some peas and carrots up in the air with a spoon. They stuck to the ceiling for a few minutes, but then they landed on Andrea’s head. So she dumped a bowl of spaghetti over my head. I pushed a bowl of macaroni and cheese in her face, and Emily got hit in the head with a meatball. The next thing we knew, the whole school was having a big food fight.

  That’s when Ella Mentry showed up. She didn’t give us the award for having the cleanest school in the district. But she did dump a bowl of chocolate pudding over Mr. Klutz’s head.

  “That was a very embarrassing day,” said Mrs. Jafee. “We can’t let it happen again. With the reporter and a camera crew coming, we need to show our school in the best possible light.”

  “You’re going to shine lights on the school?” I asked.

  Andrea turned around to roll her eyes at me.

  “That means we need to be on our best behavior, Arlo,” she whispered. “You should try it sometime.”

  “Oh, snap!” said Ryan.

  “Mrs. Mentry doesn’t like it when things get dirty,” Mr. Klutz told us. “So let’s spend the rest of the morning cleaning up the school. I want this place to be as clean as a whistle when she arrives.”

  “Whistles aren’t clean,” I said to Alexia.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “Whistles are filled with people’s spit. They’re gross.”

  Andrea rolled her eyes at us.

  “Clean as a whistle is an idiom,” she said.

  “You’re an idiom,” I told Andrea.

  “Oh, snap!” said Ryan.

  I had no idea what an idiom was, but it was just one letter away from “idiot,” so I figured it was something mean that I could say to Andrea.

  Chapter 4

  On the Fritz

  We marched back to our class in single file. I was the line leader. Mr. Granite couldn’t go back to our math lesson because we had to clean up the room for Ella Mentry. He gave each of us a rag and a spray bottle filled with water. Andrea started singing “The Clean-up Song” . . .

  Clean up! Clean up!

  Everybody everywhere!

  Clean up! Clean up!

  Everybody do your share.

  Except that me and the guys changed the last line to “Even in your underwear.”

  It was hilarious. Anything to do with underwear is hilarious.

  Andrea thinks cleaning is fun. What is her problem? Cleaning isn’t fun. Getting dirty is fun. That’s the first rule of being a kid.

  But we did want everything to be perfect for when Mrs. Mentry and the news reporter showed up. I was cleaning off the computer table in the corner when I noticed that the screen was filled with a bunch of strange numbers and letters that made no sense at all. r />
  “Mr. Granite, the computer is on the fritz,” I said.

  “Maybe I can fix it,” said Andrea. “I take a computer class after school.”

  Andrea takes classes in everything after school. If they gave a class in how to take classes, she would take that class so she could get better at class taking.

  As it turned out, Andrea couldn’t fix the computer. Mr. Granite had to call Mr. Harrison on the intercom. He came running in a few minutes later.

  “Your computer is on the fritz?” Mr. Harrison asked.

  “It was working fine just yesterday,” Mr. Granite told him.

  “Can you get it off the fritz?” I asked.

  Mr. Harrison removed the back of the computer and started poking around at the insides with a screwdriver.

  “I see what’s going on here,” he said. “Your external parallel processor can’t access enough gigaflops to bitmap the binary protocol blah blah blah blah blah. All we need is to upload a new firewall so the network can reboot your motherboard and maximize the serial bandwidth blah blah blah blah blah.”

  Mr. Harrison talks funny. Nobody had any idea what he was saying. But in a minute or two, the computer was working fine.

  “Hip hip hooray!” I cheered. “The computer is off the fritz!”

  “While you’re here,” said Mr. Granite, “our SMART Board went on the fritz yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that thing is busted. It should be called a dumb board.”

  “Can you fix it?” asked Mr. Granite.

  “No problem,” said Mr. Harrison. “I just need to debug the analog Bluetooth vector blah blah blah blah blah blah . . .”

  Nobody had any idea what he was talking about. But of course, a few seconds later, the SMART Board was off the fritz.

  Mr. Harrison can fix anything: computers, laser printers, scanners, intercoms, microphones, even pencil sharpeners and coffee machines. And there’s plenty of old, broken-down stuff to fix at our school.