Mr. Granite Is from Another Planet!

by Dan Gutman

  “What do you mean?” asked Emily.

  “Well, it seems to me that feet should run and noses should smell,” Mr. Granite said. “So why do people say noses run and feet smell?”

  “It’s just an expression,” said Michael.

  “It makes no sense,” said Ryan.

  “My feet don’t smell,” I said.

  “They do too, A.J.,” said Neil the nude kid. “When you had that sleepover at your house, I had to sleep with your feet in my face.”

  “A nose would run if it had legs,” Michael said.

  “Feet could smell if they had a nose,” said Ryan.

  “Yeah, if you had a nose attached to your foot, your foot could smell,” I pointed out.

  “Arlo, you’re just trying to get out of doing math next period,” said Andrea.

  “I am not.”

  “Are too.”

  We went back and forth like that for a while until Mr. Granite told us to knock it off.

  “Why are there no eggs in an eggplant?” he asked the class. “And why is there no ham in a hamburger? Hot dogs aren’t made from dogs. And a pineapple doesn’t have apples in it. Or pine, for that matter.”

  “Mr. Granite is right!” said Ryan.

  “English is weird,” I said.

  “Why are boxing rings square?” asked Mr. Granite. “If they’re rings, they should be round.”

  “Yeah!” some of the kids agreed.

  “If one tooth and another tooth are called teeth,” said Mr. Granite, “and one goose and another goose are called geese, then why aren’t one moose and another moose called meese?”

  “Yeah!” Neil said. “What’s up with that?”

  “Why do we play at a recital and recite at a play?” asked Mr. Granite. “When a house burns up, how can it also burn down? And why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?”

  “Yeah!” everybody shouted.

  “Mr. Granite is right!” I said. “The English language is messed up. If you ask me, we should complain.”

  “Who are you going to complain to, Arlo?” asked Andrea.

  “The president!” I said. “We should write a letter to the president of the United States!”

  Andrea rolled her eyes, but Mr. Granite said that writing a friendly letter to the president was a great idea. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.

  Mr. Granite passed out paper to everybody. It’s hard to write while you’re riding a bike. So I kept my letter short and sweet:

  Dear Mr. President,

  I am a third-grade student at Ella Mentry School. I don’t think it’s fair that your feet smell. Do you have a nose attached to your foot?

  Sincerely,

  A. J.

  7

  Mr. Granite Goes Overboard

  It was recess. We were on the swings in the playground. Me and the guys were talking about important stuff, like who won the big game last night. Andrea and her friends were talking about girlie stuff, like what color they should paint their toenails.

  That’s when Mr. Granite came over. He was carrying some kind of machine.

  “Everybody off the swings!” he shouted.

  “Why?” we all asked.

  “I need to attach this generator to the top of the swing set,” Mr. Granite replied. “So every time you swing back and forth, you’ll be making electricity.”

  We had to get off the swing set and go over to the field near the cows and the windmill.

  “I miss Mrs. Daisy,” said Neil the nude kid. “She was normal.”

  “We used to say Mrs. Daisy was weird,” Michael said. “But Mr. Granite is even weirder.”

  “MOOOOOOOOOO,” said a cow.

  “Mr. Granite is going overboard with this green stuff,” said Ryan.

  “He’s falling out of a boat?” I asked.

  “No, dumbhead,” said Ryan. “I mean he’s getting carried away.”

  “I don’t see anybody carrying him away,” I pointed out. I looked around to make sure nobody was carrying Mr. Granite away.

  “MOOOOOOOOOO,” said a cow.

  “I heard that Mr. Granite is working on a machine that makes electricity every time you blink your eyes,” Michael told us. “We’ll have to wear it like a pair of glasses.”

  “That’s crazy!” I said.

  “I heard that Mr. Granite asked the music teacher, Mr. Loring, to write a song with just one note in it,” said Neil the nude kid.

  “Why?” we all asked.

  “So he wouldn’t waste any notes,” Neil said.

  “That will be the most boring song in the history of the world,” I said.

  “MOOOOOOOOOO,” agreed a cow.

  Andrea and her friends were sitting on a bench a few feet away, looking all worried.

  “What’s eating you?” I asked Andrea. “Did you get an A-minus on the math quiz?”

  “No, Arlo,” Andrea replied. “I got an A-plus. But I just figured something out.”

  “What?” we all asked.

  “Maybe Mr. Granite isn’t a real teacher at all,” Andrea said. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Maybe he’s just pretending to be a teacher,” she said. “I think that Mr. Granite…is from another planet!”

  “That’s nuts!” I told her.

  “Think about it, Arlo!” Andrea said. “Mr. Granite knows a lot about planets and stars and space, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he doesn’t understand the English language very well, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He has super vision too,” added Neil. “He can see through walls.”

  “Did you ever notice that Mr. Granite doesn’t have any hair growing out of his ears or nose?” Ryan asked.

  Andrea might be right! After all, the first rule of being a grown-up is that you have hair growing out of your ears and nose. My dad has to trim his nosehair every week.

  Maybe Mr. Granite is from another planet!

  “MOOOOOOOOOO,” said a cow.

  “He doesn’t look like an alien,” said Michael. “Aliens are little green guys with big heads.”

  “Maybe Mr. Granite is disguised as a human,” I suggested.

  “Yeah,” said Ryan. “Maybe if we peeled off his human mask, underneath we’d find a little green guy with a big head.”

  “Mr. Granite is nice,” Emily said. “Maybe he’s a good alien.”

  “Yeah, like E.T.,” said Ryan. “That’s my favorite movie. Maybe Mr. Granite is a nice alien who was left here on Earth like E.T.”

  “There are no nice aliens!” Neil said. “You’re supposed to kill aliens.”

  “Yeah,” I added, “with laser beams.”

  “Stop trying to scare Emily,” said Andrea.

  “Mr. Granite is probably going to take over the world and turn us into flesh-eating robots,” I said.

  “We’ve got to do something!” said Emily, and she went running away.

  The only problem was that Emily ran right into a cow. She was on the ground, freaking out. What a crybaby!

  “MOOOOOOOOOO,” said the cow.*

  “OOOOOOOOOW!” said Emily, which is MOOOOOOOOO upside-down and backward.

  “My dad is a policeman,” said Michael, “and he says you can’t accuse people of stuff unless you have proof.”

  “So let’s get proof that Mr. Granite is an alien,” said Neil the nude kid.

  “How are we gonna get proof?” Ryan asked.

  “I have an idea,” Andrea told everybody. “Let’s follow Mr. Granite home after school. I have my camera in my backpack. We can snoop around. I’ll take pictures of him when he peels off his human mask, and we’ll have proof!”

  Everybody agreed that Andrea was a genius and that she should get the No Bell Prize. That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.

  8

  The World’s Biggest iPod

  All afternoon I was watching Mr. Granite very carefully to see if his face was goin
g to come off. Finally, three o’clock came and the bell rang.

  “Any questions?” Mr. Granite said as we got our stuff out of our cubbies.

  “Are you going to destroy our planet?” I asked.

  “Will you peel off your face?” Neil asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” replied Mr. Granite.

  Once we got outside, me, Michael, and Ryan raced to the bike rack. Andrea and Emily were already there.

  “How will we find out where Mr. Granite lives?” asked Emily.

  “We should drop pieces of candy on the ground,” said Ryan. “That’s what the boy did in E.T.”

  “I’m not wasting my candy,” I said.

  “We should stalk Mr. Granite,” suggested Michael.

  “You mean we should hit him with celery?” I asked. “What good would that do?”

  “No, dumbhead!” said Andrea. “Stalking is—”

  She never got the chance to finish her sentence, because at that very second Mr. Granite zoomed past us on his bike.

  “Look!” said Ryan. “There he goes!”

  We all hopped on our bikes and followed Mr. Granite, being careful not to let him see us.

  “Maybe Mr. Granite will make our bikes fly,” said Ryan. “That’s what E.T. did.”

  “Will you forget about E.T. already?” Michael told Ryan.

  Finally, Mr. Granite turned into a driveway. Well, I don’t mean he became a driveway. That would be weird. He just rode his bike up into a driveway next to a house. There was a big white box in front of the garage. It had the word “PODS” on it.

  “Hey, check it out!” I told everybody. “Look at the size of that iPod!”

  “Mr. Granite lives in an iPod?” asked Michael.

  “Man!” I said. “How many songs do you think will fit on that iPod?”

  “It’s not an iPod, dumbheads,” said Andrea. “It’s one of those big storage boxes. It says PODS.”

  Oh.

  It made sense that Mr. Granite lived in a pod. I saw this movie called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It had these pod people who look just like humans. But they worked secretly to spread more pods until they could replace the entire human race. It was cool. “Anybody who lives in a pod has to be an alien,” I said.

  “My mom says we should accept people no matter where they live,” Emily said.

  “Your mom is weird,” I told her.

  “Maybe he’s building a transmitter in there to contact his home planet,” said Ryan. “Like in E.T.”

  “Give it a rest with E.T., will you?” I told Ryan.

  Mr. Granite opened a door and went inside the pod thing. We all snuck up to it, like we were secret agents. It was cool. Andrea took a little camera out of her backpack.

  “I’ll bet he’s taking off his human mask in there,” Michael whispered.

  “I’ll snap the picture when he peels off his face,” Andrea whispered.

  “That will be a real Kodak moment,” I whispered.

  “I’m scared!” whispered Emily. “Maybe we should—”

  But she never got the chance to finish her sentence. Because at that very second, Mr. Granite popped out of the pod!

  “EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!” we all screamed.

  “G’day, mates!” Mr. Granite said. He looked completely normal. “What can I do for you blokes?”

  “Uh,” I said, “we were just wondering if you trim your nose hair.”

  “You followed me home to ask if I trim my nose hair?” asked Mr. Granite.

  “Well, actually, we wanted to know where you were born,” said Andrea.

  “I came from Neptune,” said Mr. Granite.

  “WOW,” we all said, which is “MOM” upside down. So it was true! Mr. Granite really IS from another planet!

  “Yes,” he continued, “Neptune, New Jersey. Then my parents moved to Australia.”

  Oh.

  9

  Tattletales

  I didn’t believe for a minute that Mr. Granite was born in New Jersey. He was an alien from another planet for sure. And even though we didn’t have a picture of him peeling off his face, we decided there was only one thing left for us to do: We had to tell Mr. Klutz.

  The next morning we all met at school early to go to Mr. Klutz’s office. When we got there, he was wearing one of those weird square hats we had to wear at graduation. And he was sticking his head out the window.

  “Why are you sticking your head out the window?” Ryan asked.

  “Oh, excuse me,” said Mr. Klutz, pulling his head back inside. “I had to sharpen my pencil.”

  “You have a pencil sharpener outside your window?” asked Michael.

  “No, I was just gathering solar energy to power my pencil sharpener,” Mr. Klutz told us. “See? This cap has a solar panel in it. It was Mr. Granite’s idea.”

  Mr. Klutz showed us how to sharpen a pencil with his solar-powered pencil sharpener. It was cool.

  “We wanted to talk to you about Mr. Granite,” said Ryan.

  “I’m all ears,” Mr. Klutz said.

  “You are not,” I told him. “You have eyes and a nose and a mouth, too. It would be weird to be all ears.”

  “It’s just an expression, dumbhead,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. “It means Mr. Klutz is listening.”

  “I knew that,” I lied. “Anyway, we think there’s something weird about Mr. Granite.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Mr. Klutz said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Why would you want to put your finger on it?” I asked.

  “Mr. Granite lives in a pod,” Emily said.

  “And he has no nose hair,” said Michael.

  “Mr. Klutz,” said Andrea, “we suspect that Mr. Granite is from another planet.”

  “Hmmmm,” said Mr. Klutz. “It’s funny you should mention that. The other day I saw a flying saucer in the teachers’ lounge.”

  “WHAT?!” we all shouted. “You did?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Klutz, “the teachers were throwing their teacups around again. I’ll have to make another announcement about that.”

  “If Mr. Granite is an alien, will you have to fire him?” asked Emily.

  “Or attack him with laser beams?” asked Ryan.

  “Hmmmm,” said Mr. Klutz.* “This has never come up before. I’m not sure aliens from other planets are allowed to teach third grade. I’ll have to check in the Board of Education rule book.”

  “I’m bored of education,” I said.

  “In the meantime,” said Mr. Klutz, “let’s all keep our eyes peeled.”

  “That will probably hurt,” I told him. “Can’t we just watch Mr. Granite instead?”

  “Okay, let’s do that,” he said. “I want to know everything about him. I want to know what makes him tick.”

  “Mr. Granite ticks?” I asked. “Maybe there’s a clock inside him. Like the crocodile in Peter Pan.”

  “Maybe there’s a bomb inside him!” Ryan said.

  “Mr. Granite swallowed a bomb?” asked Emily. “We’ve got to do something!”

  “Run for your lives!” shouted Neil the nude kid.

  And we all went running out of Mr. Klutz’s office.

  10

  The Truth About Mr. Granite

  As it turned out, Mr. Granite didn’t have a clock or a bomb inside him. I didn’t even hear him tick. That day was a perfectly normal day. Or as normal as it can be when your teacher is from another planet.

  When the three-o’clock bell rang, Mr. Klutz made an announcement over the intercom.

  “Have a great weekend, everyone,” he said. “Next week we’ll find out if Ella Mentry School is the greenest school in the county. I can almost taste that chocolate cake now! Oh, and teachers, please stop throwing teacups around the teachers’ lounge. Thank you.”

  Me, Michael, and Ryan rode our bikes home. We were pretty tired, because we had been riding our bikes all day in class. But that’s when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world!

  “Hey,” I told
the guys, “I know how we can make our school the greenest school in the county.”

  “How?” they asked.

  “Let’s paint it green!”

  “A.J.,” Ryan said, “you’re a genius!”

  “That’s why I’m in the gifted and talented program,” I said modestly. Everybody agreed that I should get the No Bell Prize.

  That night, after dinner, I told my mom there was a bingo game at school. Michael and Ryan made up other excuses. Michael brought a bucket of green paint he found in his basement. Ryan brought some paintbrushes. We rode our bikes and met at the school.

  “Okay,” I told the guys, “let’s start by painting the front door.”

  Michael opened up the paint can. Ryan gave me a brush. I was about to dip the brush into the paint when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. A guy jumped out from behind the bushes!

  “Freeze, dirtbags!” he shouted.

  AHHHHHHHH!

  It was Officer Spence, the school security guard! He was supposed to protect the school from bad guys and criminals, not from us!

  “Let’s get out of here!” shouted Michael.

  We hopped on our bikes and pedaled as fast as we could down the street. I never even turned around to see if Officer Spence was chasing us.

  “Whew! That was a close one!” Ryan said when we were a few blocks away from school.

  “I don’t think Officer Spence saw our faces,” said Michael.

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  Just as we were about to turn the corner, I realized something. This was Mr. Granite’s street!

  “Let’s go over to Mr. Granite’s house!” I suggested. “Maybe we can catch him taking his face off.”

  We pedaled over to Mr. Granite’s house. It was easy to find because of that giant POD thing on the grass. There was a light on inside the garage. We parked our bikes across the street and tiptoed over to the garage like secret agents. It was cool.

  “Shhhhhhh!” Ryan whispered. “Nobody scream if he peels off his face.”

  We peeked between the cracks in the garage door.

  “Do you see anything?” Michael whispered.