Mr. Tony Is Full of Baloney! Read Free Page A

Records for egg-jogging,” Mr. Tony told us. “The record for running a mile while holding a spoon in your mouth with an egg on it is over eight minutes. I’m trying to break it.”
    “And that’s going to help you quit smoking?” Andrea asked.
    “Yes!” Mr. Tony said. “As long as I have a spoon in my mouth, I can’t smoke.”
    Mr. Tony sure comes up with weird ways to quit smoking.
    “Hey, how about we play a word game today?” he said. “Who can use the word ‘spaghetti’ in a sentence?”
    Andrea got all excited and was waving her arm in the air like it was on fire. But Mr. Tony called on me. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.
    “Abraham Lincoln gave the Spaghettisburg Address,” I said.
    Everybody laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny.
    “Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address, Arlo!” Little Miss Perfect said, rolling her eyes. “Not Spaghettisburg!”
    “Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
    “Try another one, A.J.,” Mr. Tony said. “Can you use the word ‘toiletries’ in a sentence?”
    “Sure,” I said. “Out in the forest there were some oak trees, some maple trees, and some toilet trees.”
    Everybody laughed again even though I didn’t say anything funny.
    “There’s no such thing as a toilet tree, Arlo!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes again.
    “Yeah, toilets don’t grow on trees,” said Emily. “Toiletries are what you bring in a little bag when you go on vacation.”

    “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Why would you take a toilet with you on vacation? Where do you go on vacation anyway? The Land of No Toilets? When I go on vacation, they have toilets there already . I don’t have to bring one with me.”
    “Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
    I was just yanking her chain, but Emily looked like she was going to cry, as usual. Sheesh, get a grip! That girl needs to go to the drugstore and buy a chill pill. She’ll cry at the drop of a hat.
    Actually, it’s true. One time after school I took Emily’s hat and dropped it in a puddle. She started crying, of course.
    “No arguing in the ASKK room,” said Mr. Tony. “I have an idea! Let’s play Simon Says!”
    “I hate Simon Says,” I said.
    “Well, we’re going to play Simon Says, A.J., and I want you to be Simon,” said Mr. Tony. “We will do anything you tell us to do as long as you say ‘Simon Says’ first.”
    “Anything?” I asked.
    “Anything,” Mr. Tony said.
    “Anything?” I repeated.
    “Anything,” Mr. Tony repeated.
    We went back and forth like that for a while.
    “Okay,” I said. “Simon Says we stop playing Simon Says and make a pizza instead.”
    “Yeah!” everybody shouted. “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!”
    “Okay! Okay!” Mr. Tony said. “You win. And because you kids are so smart, we’ll make two pizzas today.”
    “Yay!”
    We made pizza just like last time, but Mr. Tony gave us some mushrooms, sausage, and bacon to put on one of them. He says you can put anything on a pizza.
    While we ate, we asked Mr. Tony about pogo-juggling and egg-jogging. He said he hadn’t broken any records yet, but he was working on it. His goals were to get into The Guinness Book of World Records someday and to stop smoking.
    “Wouldn’t it be great to be the best person in the world at something?” he asked us.
    “That would be cool,” I agreed.
    Mr. Tony told us that you didn’t have to be a great singer or athlete or superstar to break a world record. Regular people can break records, too.
    “A man in England smashed forty eggs against his head in a minute,” he told us. “He’s in The Guinness Book of World Records for that.”
    “WOW!” we all said, which is “MOM” upside down.
    “And there’s this man in New York who pushed an orange for a mile with his nose in 22 minutes and 41 seconds.”
    Mr. Tony told us more stories about crazy people who were in The Guinness Book of World Records . There was a guy in Australia who put on twenty pairs of underpants in one minute to set the world record for putting on