Music

By Beatriz Mier
3rd Grade

I had exactly zero instruments. I lived on Cherry Street, and on Cherry Street there’s an apartment. Everybody in the apartment wanted silence. This had been going on ever since I had come there. But the boss, Miss Marcie—who was old, medium height, short gray hair, glasses, and had fancy clothes—hated music. And she made rules:

 

No music

No pets

Only 6 dirty clothes in the washer

 

And I’m not allowed to write more than that. Now I’m in the car, so that makes it okay to write down more. So rule number 4:

 

No writing more than 3 rules

 

Mom and I disagree with her. So when no one’s looking I put twelve dirty clothes in the washer. But that doesn’t help with the instruments.

My friend Ashley called. She asked if I wanted to cover over. I said yes. She was a lucky girl: she had her own house and instruments. Dinner was tuna casserole and some beans. When I left I was sad.

The next day was Monday. Monday meant school. School meant yay! Yay meant music class.

School as nice, but the substitute was mean. Guess who? Miss…MARCIE! She loves grammar. The rest of the day was easy.

Some rules:

 

5 minutes of music

Get punctuation correct.

No interrupting!

Raise your hand.

Wait till 3:00 to leave the class.

Don’t fall asleep.

Spell the words correctly.

 

But I was still naughty. Miss McRia doesn’t give detention, so I didn’t raise my hand before I talked.

The day only got worse. We had music class for five minutes. Then I went home and found myself in a true nightmare: grammar homework. Miss Marcie had just left and Mr. Thompson arrived. As I’m sure you know, he was the new boss. And as I’m sure you don’t know, he was worse.

He squeezed everybody into a small, squeaky, stinky shack. I thought of the ukelele I wanted. Somebody told me that if you’re in a small shack, for example, compare it with something worse. Then you’ll feel better.

A week later, we had a meeting with Mr. Thompson. They elected my mom as the boss.