Chapter One Boring, Snoring Mr. Loring My name is A.J. and I hate school. I hate reading. I hate writing. I hate arithmetic. But there's one horrible subject that I really hate more than anything else. Music. Music is so dumb! Music is the most boring subject in the history of the world. Why do we need music class in school, anyway? It's not like I'm going to grow up to be a singer. When I grow up, I'm going to be a professional dirt bike racer. In first grade last year, the music teacher, Mr. Loring, made us sing all these totally corny songs from prehistoric times, like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." Mr. Loring loves boats, I guess. He's weird. He's about a million hundred years old, and he has long gray hair. Mr. Loring told us that when he was a kid back in the last century, TV wasn't even invented yet. Can you imagine living in a world without TV? It must have been horrible! I would die if I didn't have TV. Mr. Loring's favorite song for us to sing was "Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?" You know the song: Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? A.J. stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Who me? Yes you. Couldn't be. Then who? Ryan stole the cookie from the cookie jar. I used to like that song, but Mr. Loring made us sing it so many times that I never wanted to eat another cookie for the rest of my life. Mr. Loring's other favorite song was"Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed." That song got really old too. If any monkeys ever jumped on my bed, I would sell the bed. That's disgusting! I don't even like it when my sister jumps on my bed. Forget about monkeys. "Everybody line up!" said my teacher, Miss Daisy, after we finished pledging the allegiance. "Line up for what?" we all asked. "It's time to go to music," Miss Daisy said. "Yippee!" said Andrea Young, this really annoying girl with curly brown hair. "Boo!" said just about everybody else. Nobody except Andrea and her friend Emily wanted to go see boring, snoring Mr. Loring. Andrea loves everything about school. She even loves homework. One day Andrea asked Miss Daisy if we could have more homework! Can you imagine asking your teacher to give you more homework? Andrea is weird.