it all started with the pepsi. cam said he’d give me his 600 ml pepsi with the free game piece under the cap which I really needed because I’m only three hundred and seventy five away from the jacket which has a really cool pocket on the shoulder for your pencils and cam said he would give me the pepsi if I ate glue in art class which is right after lunch and I said okay even though I wasn’t very hungry because my dad used to eat paste when he was a kid and he seems pretty much okay now so I drank the pepsi and now I only need three hundred and seventy four more to get the jacket but I might cash them in earlier and get the movie gift certificates because the incredible hulk movie is coming and I don’t want to miss it and it would be pretty cool if my dad took me to the theatre and he said “two tickets for the incredible hulk, please” and I could say “excuse me dad, I think you miscounted because I already have my tickets” and then I’d slide my tickets to the ticket taker who would be really impressed and dad would have to spend my ticket money on the extra large combo pack which he says he can’t afford and furthermore, I don’t need, but since the hulk is my favorite and he’s got the extra money now I figure I can have the extra large combo pack which is a popcorn, twizzlers, nacho chips and cheese, and an extra large pepsi which I share with my dad because it’s too heavy at first and besides it makes me pee.

which is why I shouldn’t have eaten the paste in art class. because it was really slippery and hard to handle and I got it all over my pants, which is bad because dad hates doing the laundry, sometimes I see him turning his shirts inside out so he can wear them to the office one more time but we’re not poor or anything, I get quarters all the time to go to the arcade, but I just save them up so I can take dad to the movies and the zoo, but he’s gonna be pretty busy with these pants later on today, you bet. that glue was really sticky

and then, as if you can believe it, things got worse. cam was pretty sure that I was just faking eating the glue so I took a big glop of it and smeared it all over my mouth and gave him my best incredible hulk face. dad always told me that my face would freeze like that but I never believed him until then. a couple of minutes later and I couldn’t move my mouth but since it was art class it didn’t really matter if I couldn’t open my mouth since all we were doing was gluing these stupid macaroni elbows and old shells onto a piece of paper except for cam who took a couple of macaroni elbows and shoved them really far up his nose which is something I cant do since it tickles too much and then the teacher asked cam “is everything alright over there, boys?” and cam tried to say, “Yes, sir” but instead a macaroni elbow came flying out of his nose and hit the blackboard AND IT STUCK which is really grody and everyone started to laugh really hard and yell “boogeroni, boogeroni” and especially when mr lamarche had to clean it off the blackboard and he yelled at everyone, “why can’t you behave like nasser, he’s not laughing” which is true because my mouth was pretty well stuck together now.

but the boogeroni was really funny, and cam looked like he he did when he had figured a way to get chocolate bars out of the vending machine for free, and he kept looking at the macaroni on the table and whenever he picked one up, he’d bring it close to his nose and make a really retarded face and he’d whisper “who likes boogeroni? everyone like boogeroni...” and I’d have to try really hard not to laugh or I’d
wet my pants. and mr lamarche was really mean about asking for permission to go no matter how bad you had to and this time I had to go really bad so I put up my hand and when mr lamarche said yes, nasser, what would you like, I couldn’t say anything because my lips were stuck together and I still had my hulk face on too which I think really scared mr lamarche, but he really didn’t need to be scared because the hulk wouldn’t have wanted to hurt mr lamarche unless mr lamarche had a gun or something but I understand why he got scared because I do a pretty good hulk face and then cam made another boogeroni, but this time it was a double barrel and hit the windows on the far side of the room where the girls were working and they started screaming and mr lamarche went over to them for a second and I couldn’t wait anymore, so I took off for the bathroom as fast as I could and I wish I had made a spiderman face instead of a hulk face because spiderman is really fast, and the hulk is pretty big and slow and when I got there I found out that my pants were glued shut

and even though the hulk is pretty stupid, there’s a really smart guy inside of him and I figured out what to do. I ran out of the bathroom and into mr dixon’s grade eights where they kept the really sharp scissors and even though everyone tells you not to run with scissors I couldn’t really help it and ran back to the bathroom with the scissors over my head so I wouldn’t poke out my eye if I fell and I cut off my pants and made whizz just in the nick of time.

my dad sometimes tells me that schools nowadays aren’t as good as the ones that were around when he was little, but I learned a lot that day. I learned that glue tastes pretty gross, girls don’t like boogeroni, too much pepsi makes you need to pee really bad, and glue is good for keeping your pants up after you cut them off.