 | "Melvin Sneedly, the villain in this book, was actually based on somebody I knew in sixth grade. The kid I knew, Michael Sneedman, wasn't nearly as evil as Melvin, but he sure was annoying. Michael was smarter than anybody else in the class, and he knew it. Worst of all, he took every opportunity he could find to point that out to us all... and rub our noses in it.
Michael had the infuriating habit of finishing all his tests and worksheets before everybody else. Then he'd open his desk, take out a red pen, and GRADE HIS OWN PAPERS! He'd go through all of his answers, make sure they were all correct, then award himself a giant "A+" at the top. He even went so far as to make smiley faces on his papers and write "Another Fantastic Job!", or "Keep up the GREAT work, Michael!"
Oooh, that kid was obnoxious. Here's how I got him back:
After Christmas break, our teacher came up with a dumb idea to help make us all more competitive and aggressive. It was a system of keeping track of our academic achievements and "good deeds". For two weeks, we all brought in those little, flat plastic clips you find on the ends of loaves of bread (see photo).
When we finally had enough, our teacher took them all home and spray painted them different colors. The next day, he brought in a large wooden board with all of our names printed on it. Directly under each kid's name was a nail.
The object of this system was that every time you got an "A" or did a "good deed", you'd get a white bread clip (worth 1 point) to hang on the nail under your name. If you got five white bread clips, you could trade them in for a green bread clip (which was worth five points). Then there were yellow, blue, and red bread clips that were worth 10, 20, 50 points respectively. The granddaddy of all bread clips was the golden bread clip, which was worth 100 points.
On an average day, an average kid could maybe expect to earn three or four white bread clips. I usually got one or two. But Michael Sneedman was obsessed. He wasn't happy unless he had earned at least 10 white bread clips every day. Some days he earned as much as 15 bread clips, and I distinctly remember him earning 20 one day. It was the talk of the bus ride home." — Dav Pilkey |
(Continued in the Book Page for "Bionic Booger Boy part 2". Click here to continue reading this story.)
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