Ms. Hannah Is Bananas! (3 page)

For a few days, I was the star of the school. No kid had
ever
been inside the teachers' lounge. I was probably the first one in the history of the world.

Everybody wanted to know about the incredible things I saw in the teachers' lounge. Kids were even offering me
candy to tell them.

I didn't want to tell them the teachers' lounge was just a boring old room where the teachers sat around eating lunch. I didn't want to lie, either. So I just told them that the teachers blindfolded me and said they would torture me if I ever revealed what went on in the teachers' lounge. It was cool.

Our next art class wasn't an art class at all. Ms. Hannah took us on a field trip to a museum.

I hate museums. Museums are boring.

“Why don't we ever take a field trip to a cool place like a skateboard park?” I asked Ryan on the bus ride over to the museum.

“What's so great about skateboard parks?” Andrea asked from the seat in front of me.

“Well, for one thing,
you're
not there,” I said. Ryan laughed.

Andrea made a mean face at me. “I like museums,” she said. “My mom takes me to museums all the time.”

“Too bad she doesn't leave you there,” I said.

Ryan laughed.

We walked around the museum for about a million hundred hours. Ms. Hannah was all excited. She just about ran from room to room telling us about all the wonderful art.

It was horrible and boring, and I was hungry and my legs were tired. I looked for a place to sit down.

There were some big boxes of soup cans in the corner, and I went to take a rest on them. But as soon as I sat down, all these loud bells started ringing and guards came running over. One of them was blowing a whistle, and he started yelling at me.

“Get up!” he shouted. “You can't sit there!”

“Okay, okay!” I said, getting up fast. “I'll sit someplace else.” What's the big deal? I wondered.

The guard looked like he was going to arrest me or something. Luckily Ms. Hannah ran over and rescued me. I asked her what I did, and she told me that I had
sat on some art.

“That's art?” I asked. “I thought it was boxes of soup.”

“It's
modern
art!” she said. “That is a famous sculpture that is worth millions of dollars.”

It looked like soup boxes to me. Ms. Hannah told me to remember that art is everywhere, so I should be careful what I sat on. She put her arm around me and kept it there for the rest of the time we were in the museum.

We walked around and she kept pointing out the beautiful artwork all over the place.

“Look at this!” she kept saying. “Isn't it marvelous?”

We stopped in front of a painting. It was just a bunch of lines and squares and box shapes. It was really stupid.

“Isn't it wonderful?” Ms. Hannah said. “It's called ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie.'”

“My little sister could paint that with her eyes closed,” I said.

The next room didn't have any paintings on the walls at all. But all kinds of junk was hanging from the ceiling.

“Can anybody tell me what these are?” Ms. Hannah asked us.

“That must be the museum's garbage,” I told her. “When my family goes camping, we hang our garbage from a tree so the bears and raccoons don't get it.”

“They don't have bears and raccoons
in museums, dumbhead,” Andrea said. “Those things are called mobiles.”

“That's right, Andrea!” Ms. Hannah said, and Andrea stuck her tongue out at me. I hate her. “They are also called kinetic sculptures.”

“What does that mean?” Emily asked.

“It means it comes from Connecticut,” I told her.

“No,
kinetic
means ‘movement,'” Ms. Hannah said. “The sculptures can move.”

“Don't tell me
that 's
art,” I said, looking at one of those Connecticut things.

“Not only is this art,” Ms. Hannah said, “it's a masterpiece!”

“Looks like hanging garbage to me,” I
said. This museum was the weirdest museum in the history of museums. I was bored and hungry, and I wanted to sit down. Finally Ms. Hannah said we could go outside in the garden and have a snack.

“Before we leave the museum,” she started, “does anybody have any questions?”

I raised my hand. “If all of the stuff in here is art, how do they know what to throw away as garbage?” I asked. “Do they ever throw the art away by accident and leave the garbage here? How do they know which is which?”

Everybody laughed even though I
didn't say anything funny. I never did find out how they threw their garbage away.

There's a garden in the back of the Museum of Hanging Garbage. We went out there, and Ms. Hannah gave out pretzels and punch to all of us. She said we could run around and burn off some energy.

We were munching the pretzels when
Michael noticed a statue at the other end of the garden. It was a statue of a guy. He was dressed in a raincoat and he was holding an umbrella. The cool thing was that the statue guy was painted gold from head to toe.

“Now
that
is cool,” I said.

A bunch of people were standing around in a circle looking at the statue guy.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Michael said. “I just saw that statue guy move.”

“He did not,” I said.

“Did too,” said Michael.

I went over to the statue guy. There was a hat on the ground in front of him,
and there was money in it. That was weird. If it was a statue, why would anybody give it money?

The statue guy wasn't moving at all. I walked around him real slow. I said “Boo!” to him. He didn't move. I wanted to touch him to see if he was a real statue, but I was scared.

I looked in the statue guy's eyes. They sure looked real, but he wasn't moving a muscle.

“See, I told you,” I said to Michael. “It's just a stat—”

But just as I said it, the statue guy suddenly picked up his hand and put it on my head!

I screamed and jumped about three feet in the air! All the people who were watching started to laugh even though there wasn't anything funny about it.

I hadn't been so scared since I went to this haunted mansion on Halloween and
all these zombies were jumping out from behind the walls. When that statue guy moved, I thought I was going to die.

Ms. Hannah came over and put her arm around me.

“See, that's art too, A.J.!” she said as she put some money in the statue guy's hat. “This man has turned himself into a work of art! It's just like I always tell you. Art is everywhere. This is called performance art!”

Performance art? Performance art? I think maybe when I grow up, I will paint myself gold and stand around doing nothing but scaring kids all day. That performance art stuff is cool.

When we got back to school, Ms. Hannah took us to the art room. What a mess!

There was more junk than ever in there. Her newspaper ball was bigger too.

It was almost as tall as me.

Ms. Hannah said she hoped the art we saw in the museum had inspired us to
create art on our own. She passed out paper and pencils and said that today we were going to draw friendship pictures.

“What's a friendship picture?” Emily asked.

“A friendship picture is a picture that two people draw together,” she said.

“That sounds like fun,” said Andrea. “Can Emily and I work on a friendship picture together? We're best friends.”

“Can I draw a picture with A.J.?” asked Ryan.

“No,” said Ms. Hannah. “I want Andrea and A.J. to work on a friendship picture together.”

Everybody laughed even though Ms.

Hannah didn't say anything funny. That's because everybody knows that Andrea and I hate each other.

“Do I have to work with
him
?” Andrea asked.

“Do I have to work with
her
?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Ms. Hannah. “Andrea, you love butterflies, right? A.J., you love skateboards. Let's see the two of you draw a skateboarding butterfly.”

We got to work. Andrea drew the butterfly and the background. I drew a helmet on the butterfly, a skateboard under it, and a bunch of ramps and stuff.

Our friendship picture actually came out pretty good. Ms. Hannah was so impressed at how well me and Andrea
worked together that she went to get Miss Daisy.

“Hey, this is pretty cool,” I said, holding up our friendship picture.

“Wow,” agreed Andrea, taking the friendship picture. “I'm going to take this home so my mom can put it up on the refrigerator.”

“I want to take it home,” I said, grabbing the friendship picture away from Andrea. “My mom will want to put it up on
our
refrigerator.”

“You hate art, A.J.,” Andrea said, grabbing the friendship picture back. “Why should
you
get to take it home?”

“Because I want it, that's why,” I said. I grabbed the friendship picture back
from Andrea. Only this time Andrea didn't let go.

She pulled on one side of the friendship picture. I pulled on the other side of the friendship picture. That's when our
friendship picture ripped right down the middle.

“You ruined our friendship picture!” Andrea shouted.

“I did not! You did!”

“I hate you!”

“I hate you back!”

I heard Ms. Hannah and Miss Daisy coming down the hall toward the art room.

“Wait until you see how well A.J. and Andrea are working together,” Ms. Hannah said as they walked into the room. “You won't believe your eyes.”