Dr. Carbles Is Losing His Marbles!

by Dan Gutman

  I didn’t know what “shenanigans” were, but I didn’t tell him that. I bet Andrea knows. She read the whole encyclopedia so she could show off how smart she is. What’s up with that?

  “If you don’t like our shenanigans, maybe we could get some new shenanigans,” I suggested.

  “A.J., let’s be Frank,” Dr. Carbles said.

  I slapped my forehead.

  “You mean both of us?” I asked. “Won’t that be confusing?”

  “Enough! I know what you’re trying to do, young man. You’re trying to mess with my mind. Well, it won’t work. Get out of my office!”

  “Okay, Frank,” I said.

  I got up to leave but stopped at the door.

  “Can I have a candy bar, Frank?” I asked.

  “No! And stop calling me Frank!”

  Sheesh, what a sourpuss! He’s the one who said to call him Frank.

  If you ask me, Dr. Carbles needs to take a chill pill.

  6

  Dr. Carbles Is Watching You

  When I got back to class, everybody was working on our Thanksgiving display. Miss Daisy said we should still make one even if Mr. Klutz wasn’t our principal anymore.

  We spent all morning learning about Thanksgiving. The first one was in 1621, and it went on for three days. That’s a long meal! Back then the Pilgrims only had knives and spoons. They didn’t have any forks. Maybe if they had forks, it wouldn’t have taken them three days to eat dinner.

  Did you know that at the first Thanksgiving the Pilgrims didn’t just eat turkey? They also ate ducks, geese, and swans. Ugh, disgusting!

  It was fun making the display, but nobody was happy. We all knew that in the afternoon there would be more marching, more yelling, and more rules.

  When we got to the vomitorium for lunch, all the posters about exercising and the Food Pyramid were gone. There were new posters that said NO TALKING!, BEHAVE, OR ELSE!, and SHUT UP AND EAT! There was even a video camera mounted on the wall with a sign under it that said DR. CARBLES IS WATCHING YOU. We had to whisper, because none of us wanted to get sent to Dr. Carbles’s office.

  “I heard Dr. Carbles is going to put up guard towers and barbed wire around the school so we can’t escape,” Ryan whispered.

  “We may have to dig a tunnel to get out,” I whispered to the guys. “I saw that in a movie once.”

  “I heard that he punishes kids by putting them into solitary confinement,” whispered Michael.

  “They’re forced to play solitaire?” I whispered back.

  “Solitary confinement isn’t the same as solitaire, dumbhead,” whispered Andrea, who was sitting at the next table.

  “Is too,” I whispered.

  We whispered back and forth like that for a while until I had to whisper “So is your face” to Andrea. But I knew I was right, because my mom plays that game solitary confinement on her computer.

  “I miss Mr. Klutz,” whispered Emily.

  “I’m worried about him,” whispered Andrea. “My mother is a psychologist, and she said that people who lose their jobs can get depressed.”

  “We’ve got to do something!” Emily whispered.

  “We should go over to his house and cheer him up,” Michael whispered.

  “How would we find out where he lives?” whispered Neil the nude kid.

  “My mother is vice president of the PTA,” Andrea whispered. “She knows everything.”

  Suddenly Dr. Carbles burst into the vomitorium with his bullhorn.

  “Knock it off!” he yelled. “It’s time for the lunchtime march! Let’s go!”

  We all jumped up and got into line outside the door.

  “Hop to it!” Dr. Carbles hollered. “Left! Right! March! Move it, kindergarteners! You’re slow and weak! I want each of you to give me twenty push-ups!”

  Dr. Carbles is losing his marbles!

  7

  The Truth About Dr. Carbles

  Well, I had to admit that Andrea came through for us. Her mother got Mr. Klutz’s address, and on Saturday we all piled into her van to go visit him.

  The van was big enough to hold Andrea, Emily, me, Ryan, Michael, and Neil the nude kid. Andrea’s mom needs a big van because she is always taking Andrea and her annoying girly friends to dance lessons and cooking lessons and piano lessons and every other kind of lessons they have. If they gave lessons on how to clip your toenails, Andrea would take them so she could get better at it.

  I was really surprised when we got to Mr. Klutz’s address. I thought he would live in a castle, since he was king of the school. But it was just a regular old house. Ryan rang the doorbell, and a lady came out.

  “May I help you?” she asked. “I’m Karla Klutz.”

  Wow! Mr. Klutz never told us he had a wife! I wonder if she knew her husband was going to marry a turkey.

  “Is Mr. Klutz home?” Andrea’s mom asked.

  “Yes, please come inside.”

  She led us into the living room. And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years what we saw in there.

  It was a half-pipe!

  Mr. Klutz had a giant half-pipe right in the middle of his living room! Not only that, but he was skateboarding on it! He did a frontside 180 ollie and a handstand fingerflip and a coconut wheelie. He was really good!

  “Wooooo-hooooooooooooo!” yelled Mr. Klutz. “Watch this!”

  He tried to do an inverted nosegrab, but he messed up, and it turned into a spectacular faceplant.***

  “Are you okay?” we all asked as we ran over to help him.

  “Of course!” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” (That’s grown-up talk for “What are you doing here?”)

  “We were afraid you’d be depressed,” Andrea told him, “so we came to cheer you up.”

  “Me? Depressed?” said Mr. Klutz. “I’ve never been happier! I don’t have to write reports anymore or deal with crazy teachers, pushy parents, or obnoxious kids. Finally, I have time to chase my dream.”

  “What’s your dream?” Neil the nude kid asked.

  “To become a championship skateboarder,” Mr. Klutz said.

  “Cool!” said all the boys.

  “But you’re a great principal!” said Andrea, who never misses the chance to brownnose a grown-up. “We need you back at school.”

  “Dr. Carbles is driving us crazy,” Michael said.

  “Yes, Milton can be a bit hard to deal with,” said Mr. Klutz.

  “Milton?!” I said. “He told me his name was Frank!”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Klutz, “but do you know why he fired me?”

  “Because you wear diapers?” I asked.

  “No,” Mr. Klutz said. “Milton and I grew up together. He was my rival when we were teenagers. We were the two best skaters on the local skateboarding team. Then one day we got into an argument and I called him Walrus Face. From then on, everybody called him Walrus Face. He’s been out to get me ever since.”

  “That’s an insult,” I said, “to walruses!”

  “Hold on,” said Andrea. “Dr. Carbles has been out to get you all these years just because you gave him a silly nickname?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Mr. Klutz told us. “Milton was also jealous of me because he went bald at a very young age and I had a full head of hair.”

  “YOU HAD A FULL HEAD OF HAIR?!” we all said at the same time.

  Mr. Klutz has no hair at all. I mean none.

  “Did you think I was born this way?” Mr. Klutz asked.

  Mrs. Klutz brought out a photo album with pictures of Mr. Klutz as a teenager. He had hair down to his shoulders!

  “That’s sad that your hair stopped growing,” said Emily. It looked like there were tears in her eyes. What a crybaby!

  “Oh, it didn’t stop growing,” Mr. Klutz told us. “It still grows. Only now it grows out of my ears and nose. I have to trim it every week.”

  Ew, disgusting! I thought I was gonna throw up.

  “Wait a minute,”
Andrea said. “Dr. Carbles isn’t bald.”

  “Yes he is,” said Mr. Klutz. “He wears a toupee. Shhhh! Don’t tell him I told you. If people found out he’s bald, it would drive him crazy.”

  Andrea’s mother said it was time for us to go. Mr. Klutz thanked us for coming.

  Just before we pulled out of the driveway, Mrs. Klutz came running over to the van.

  “He’s driving me crazy at home!” she said. “You’ve got to get him back to school!”

  8

  Far-out, Man!

  The next day it was more of the same at school. No talking. No smiling. No laughing. No fun.

  Since it was raining at three o’clock, I thought Dr. Carbles might let us skip the after-school march. But he didn’t. When the bell rang, he led us out onto the playground and made us march around in the rain. It was horrible.

  “Left! Right! Left! Right!” barked Dr. Carbles. “You kids are a disgrace!”

  Finally he let us go home. I walked with Ryan and Michael. We were soaked.

  “It’s not fair!” Ryan said, as we crossed the street next to the school.

  “What’s not fair?” somebody asked.

  It was Mr. Louie, the school crossing guard. He wears bell-bottom pants and tie-dyed shirts, and he always has his guitar with him. Well, actually it’s a stop sign. He wrote the word STOP in big letters on the back of his guitar.

  We told Mr. Louie all about Dr. Carbles.

  “Bummer, man!” Mr. Louie said. “That dude gives off bad vibes.”

  “And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Michael said.

  “Sure there is!” Mr. Louie told us. “You should protest! That’s what they did back in the Sixties, man. It was far-out! Peace and love were in the air. People changed the world by protesting. You can change your world, too!”

  It sounded like a great idea. I invited Mr. Louie over to my house after school so he could teach me and the guys how to protest like they did in the Sixties.

  Mr. Louie told us that the way to change the world is to sing songs, chant slogans, and hold up signs. Michael made a sign that said POWER TO THE PEOPLE. Ryan made a sign that said DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER 12. I made a sign that said CARBLES IS LOSING HIS MARBLES!

  While we were working on our signs, Mr. Louie taught us some protest songs, like “Blowin’ in the Wind,”**** and “If I Had a Hammer.”

  I don’t get that hammer song. It’s about some guy who wants a hammer. Why doesn’t he just go to a hardware store and buy one? Hammers don’t cost that much. Instead of singing about hammers, I think we should sing “If I Had a Snowboard” or “If I Had an Xbox.” That would make a lot more sense than singing about hammers, if you ask me.

  Anyway, when me and the guys got to school the next morning, we were ready to protest. We marched around with our signs. We chanted slogans. We sang songs. We were in the middle of “If I Had a Snowboard” when Andrea came over to us.

  “What are you dumbheads doing?” she asked.

  “We’re protesting, man!” I said. “We’re gonna change the world!”

  “You probably don’t even change your underwear, Arlo,” said Andrea, and she went up the steps to school.

  “CARBLES NEVER! KLUTZ FOREVER!” chanted Ryan.

  “TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT—WHO DO WE APPRECIATE?” chanted Michael. “KLUTZ! KLUTZ! KLUTZ!”

  A bunch of kids gathered around to watch. Some of them joined our protest. A few of the teachers joined in, too. Soon we had a big mob protesting. Everything was going great!

  And then, you’ll never guess in a million hundred years what came rolling out of the playground.

  I’m not going to tell you.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.

  It was a tank!

  No, not a fish tank, dumbhead. It was one of those big army tanks. And it was heading our way!

  The top of the tank opened up, and Dr. Carbles’s head popped out.

  “GO TO YOUR CLASSROOMS, NOW!” Dr. Carbles hollered into his bullhorn. “I WILL CRUSH YOUR REBELLION!”

  Wow! Where do you think Dr. Carbles got a tank? I guess he rented it. You can rent anything, you know. There’s probably a place called Rent-a-Tank.

  Dr. Carbles was driving the tank straight at us.

  “He wouldn’t dare run us over,” Michael said.

  “GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Dr. Carbles shouted. “OR YOU WILL BE LOCKED IN THE DUNGEON ON THE THIRD FLOOR!”

  The tank was getting closer! We didn’t know what to say! We didn’t know what to do! We had to think fast!

  “Run for your lives!” I shouted just as the tank was about to rumble over us.

  9

  How to Drive Grown-ups Crazy

  Well, that whole protest thing was a dumb idea. Luckily none of us got killed. We’d have to think up another way to get rid of Dr. Carbles.

  “Remember how we got rid of Ms. Todd?” Ryan said the next morning while we were putting our backpacks away.

  Ms. Todd was a substitute teacher at our school. She tried to murder Miss Daisy and take her job, but we caught her. Ms. Todd was odd.

  “Yeah, we drove her crazy,” I said.

  “Then we have to drive Dr. Carbles crazy,” said Michael.

  If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s driving grown-ups crazy. There are lots of ways to do that. One way is to say everything they say right after they say it. That’s a good one. Sometimes I ask my parents “Why?” over and over again. It drives them nuts.

  But it was Neil the nude kid who had the greatest idea in the history of the world. “We should steal Dr. Carbles’s toupee!” Neil said.

  Yeah! Mr. Klutz told us that if anybody ever found out Dr. Carbles was bald, it would drive him crazy! Neil’s idea was genius! He should be in the gifted and talented program.

  The only problem was, how were we going to steal Dr. Carbles’s toupee?

  “We could sneak into his house in the middle of the night and rip it off his head,” suggested Michael.

  “Nah,” Ryan said. “He probably has an electric fence and a moat around his house.”

  “We could rent a giant wind machine and blow it off his head,” suggested Michael. “You can rent anything.”

  “Nah,” Ryan said. “It costs a lot of money to rent a giant wind machine.”

  That’s when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world.

  “Hey!” I said. “Every day after lunch, Dr. Carbles stands outside and watches us march around the playground, right?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “So what?”

  “Well, he has a fishing pole in his office,” I told the guys. “We could hang the fishing pole out the second-floor window and go fishing for toupee!”

  “You’re a genius!” Neil the nude kid told me.

  I should get the No Bell Prize. That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.

  During lunch me and Neil snuck out of the vomitorium. We slinked around the halls like secret agents. Nobody was around. All the teachers must have been eating in the teachers’ lounge.

  I opened the door to Dr. Carbles’s office. It was empty. Perfect! I grabbed the fishing pole, and we tore out of there.

  We ran up the steps to the second floor. I handed Neil the pole and opened a window. We peeked out. Dr. Carbles was right below us, standing there with his bullhorn. The kids were just starting to march out of the vomitorium.

  “Left! Right!” Dr. Carbles yelled at the kids. “March, you weasels!”

  “This is gonna be great!” Neil giggled as he stuck the fishing pole out the window. “He’ll go crazy once we steal his toupee.”

  “Okay,” I told Neil, “drop the hook now.”

  Neil lowered the line until the hook was hanging right above Dr. Carbles’s head.

  “A little to the left,” I told Neil. “Lower!”

  Neil was having a hard time hooking the toupee.

  “My arms are getting tired,” Neil said.

  I grabbed the pole. Neil helped me guid
e the hook. It was not easy! The hook kept blowing around.

  “Any nibbles yet?” Neil asked.

  “Nope.” But right after I said that, I felt a little pull on the line. “Hey, I think I got it!”

  I started reeling in the toupee, but there was just one problem. It wouldn’t come off Dr. Carbles’s head! So I pulled harder.

  “It’s a big one!” I told Neil. “It’s a fighter!”

  I kept tugging on the fishing pole, but the toupee just wouldn’t budge.

  “It must be glued on good!” Neil said.

  “Maybe they took hair off other parts of his body and planted it on his head,” I said. “I saw that on a TV commercial once.”

  “That’s disgusting!” said Neil.

  Suddenly Dr. Carbles grabbed his toupee and looked up at us.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” he shouted.

  Uh-oh. I dropped the pole. It fell out the window and almost hit Dr. Carbles on the head.

  “A.J., report to my office immediately!” he hollered.

  “Ooooooooooooooh!” went all the kids on the playground.

  That’s it. My life was over. I would have to move to Antarctica and live with the penguins.

  10

  The Torture Room

  When I got to Dr. Carbles’s office, he told me to sit in the chair next to his desk. Then he just stared at me. He looked really mad.

  “Are you going to be Frank?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything. He pulled down the shades to make the room dark. Then he turned on his desk lamp and pointed the light on me.

  “Who told you I wear a toupee, A.J.?” asked Dr. Carbles. “Huh? Who told you?”

  I was pretty sure I had the right to remain silent. I saw that on a TV show once. Besides, I was too scared to say anything.

  “The teachers are plotting against me, aren’t they?” Dr. Carbles said. “I don’t trust them. I see the way they look at me. They hate me. Everybody hates me.”