Funny Boy Takes on the Chit-Chatting Cheeses from Chattanooga Read Free

me those are not normal cheeses.”
    [Imagine scary music here.]

CHAPTER 4

    IF YOU’RE A BOY, THINK ABOUT SKIPPING THIS CHAPTER, BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! YUCK, DISGUSTING!
    It was a beautiful, sun-kissed day, with puffy white clouds hanging in the sky like gigantic cotton candy. But none of that had anything to do with this book, of course.
    The news that four alien cheeses had landed in Wisconsin was not a big story at first. When I looked in the newspaper the next morning, the front page headline did not shout in huge letters ALIEN CHEESES LAND IN WISCONSIN! The headline read SCHOOL BOARD TO HIRE NEW CROSSING GUARDS. In fact, there wasn’t even an article anywhere in the paper about an alien landing.
    You see, there’s something you need to know about the state of Wisconsin. It is the cheese capital of the world.
    That’s no joke. My foster dad Bob Foster’s hobby is cheese, and he knows more about cheese than just about anybody in the world. Bob told me that Wisconsin produces more cheese than any state in America, and more cheese than most entire countries. You’ve seen those guys at Green Bay Packers football games wearing cheeses on their heads, right? Well, everybody in Wisconsin walks around like that.
    People reading this book who live in Wisconsin can back me up on this. They produce so much cheese in Wisconsin that they don’t know what to do with it all. They eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They use it as doorstops and paperweights. They stuff it in their mattresses. Kids use it in place of Play-Doh.
    In Wisconsin, they don’t even use paper money and coins to buy things. They use cheese. They carry the stuff with them in backpacks wherever they go.
    It’s true, I say! The word Wisconsin, in fact, is an old Indian word that means “land of milk curds.”
    Just to give you an idea of how important cheese is in Wisconsin, I have prepared the following overview of the state. You may want to clip out this page and use it for your next social studies report:
    STATE PROFILE OF WISCONSIN
State slogan: America’s Dairyland
    State animal: Cow
    State food: Duh!
    State color: Bleu
    State bird: The Gorgonzola
    Largest ethnic group: Kurds
    Most popular TV show: The Muensters
    Governor: Chuck E. Cheese
    Because they have so much cheese in Wisconsin, it probably wasn’t such a big deal when those four giant cheese aliens arrived from outer space. But I live in Texas, and I was sure all the kids would be talking about it at school the next morning.

    “It is time for current events,” my teacher Mrs. Wonderland announced. “Who has a news story for us today?”
    I was the only one who raised a hand.
    “Yes, Funny Boy?”
    “I don’t have a clipping from the newspaper, but last night, four giant cheeses landed on a mailman in Wisconsin.”
    The class burst out laughing. As I mentioned earlier, something in Earth’s atmosphere has made me unbelievably funny. People laugh when I say just about anything because of my super sense of humor.

    “I see it’s joke time again,” Mrs. Wonderland muttered wearily as she rubbed her eyes.
    “Joke time?” I said. “Okay, these two guys walk into a bar. You’d think the second one would have ducked.”
    “Funny Boy,” Mrs. Wonderland hissed, “where did you come up with this ridiculous notion that cheeses came from outer space and landed in Wisconsin?”
    “I was watching the Food Network—”
    Some of the kids in the back of the room interrupted me with laughter.
    “What a dork!” said Sal Monella, the biggest and dumbest kid in the class.
    “That’s enough of that!” Mrs. Wonderland roared, clapping to get everybody’s attention. “Let’s move on to math. Yesterday we were working on multiplication. Let’s review. What is eight times seven?”
    I raised my hand and Mrs. Wonderland pointed to me.
    “Eight times seven what?” I asked.
    “Eight times seven anything, ” Mrs. Wonderland replied. “It’s simple. Eight ... times