A FLIPPIN’ BIG IDEA

Later that week, Flip was hanging at my house, and I figured I might as well get an expert opinion besides Ms. Donatello’s.

“Hey, Flip? Do you think we’re dumb?” I said.

“Definitely,” he said.

Or more like shouted. Our house can be kind of noisy sometimes. Georgia and her “band,” We Stink, were practicing in the garage. Dotty was running the vacuum cleaner in the living room. And Flip and I were in my room, playing one of my favorite new games with Junior. The game is called Drive the Dog into a Psycho Frenzy with a Laser Pointer.

Flip had the laser pointer, and Junior was running around my room trying to bite that tiny red dot on my blankets… my rug… my walls… my desk… my pile of dirty clothes. It’s an awesome game.

“Why are you asking me that, anyway?” Flip said. He had the laser pointed at my pillow now, and Junior was going at it like we were one bite away from a room full of feathers.

“It’s Miller,” I said.

“Don’t worry about Big and Tall,” he said (which was Flip’s name for Miller).

“I have to,” I told him. “Miller has hated me since dinosaurs were working the drive-thru at McDonald’s. And now this whole Learning Skills thing is just one more reason why he—”

“You know what you should do?” Flip said all of a sudden. Flip does everything all of a sudden. “You should get on the football team!”

He said it like it was the best idea ever. When actually it was kind of the opposite. I couldn’t even imagine myself on the football team.

Actually, I could imagine it, but not in any kind of good way.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” I told Flip. “Right after my next mission to Mars.”