Read Online I'm Going to Be Famous by Tom Birdseye - Free Book Online

bathroom with two bananas sticking out of my pockets. She stopped and watched me go. Then she went on to her classroom.
    Lucky for me, she’s the quietest kid in all of Lincoln Elementary School. She won’t tell anybody about my secret banana practice place. She never tells anybody about anything.
    So now I’m hiding in stall number 1 of the boys’ bathroom. Stall number 1 is right by the wall. I picked it on purpose. It has several advantages over stalls number 2, 3, or 4. First, it’s in the corner of the bathroom. Some kids even forget that stall number 1 is here because it’s in the corner and behind the bathroom door when it opens. That’s good.
    Another advantage of stall number 1 is that it has a wall on one side. If someone is going to peek underneath at you (which happens a lot), he can only do it from one side. This cuts the chances in half of someone looking under stall number 1 and catching me practicing my banana-eating. I like those odds.
    And probably the best advantage of stall number 1 is that the latch on the door works really well. The other stalls have latches that are all the time coming undone. You can be sitting there, minding your own business, and all of a sudden— click, the latch comes undone and the door swings open. Now that can be very embarrassing.
    I have nine days left until I make my attempt at a world record. Nine days, that’s all. I’ve been practicing at Ben’s, in the cafeteria, and also secretly at home and in the boys’ bathroom. And I’ve been doing PBA over, and over, and over. It’s getting so I go to sleep doing PBA. And then I wake up doing PBA. I even dream PBA.
    Last night I had a weird dream. I dreamed that I walked into a banana factory. There were shiny metal machines everywhere. PBA was blaring out over loudspeakers. A man in a white coat, white pants, white shoes, and a white hat walked up to me. He explained that this was Crystal Murkele’s Banana Corporation. He said that bananas no longer grew on trees and that those machines could produce over 250,000 bananas per day. My job was to be a banana taste-tester. I would put my banana taste buds to work on machine-made bananas twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I could retire from the job when I was eighty-three years old.
    He smiled when he finished talking. He had yellow teeth. Then he raised his hand over his head and clicked his fingers three times. With that, all the machines in the factory started wheezing and grinding and churning. Bananas began to pop out everywhere: from chutes, pipes, conveyor belts, glass tubes, and chrome tunnels. Before I could even move, bananas were piling up around my ankles. Within thirty seconds they were knee deep. And less than two minutes later, I had bananas up to my eyeballs.
    The man in the white coat smiled at me with his yellow teeth. “Get to work, Arlo,” he said, “and be sure to pick up the peels when you’re finished.”
    That dream was so real I woke up with banana taste in my mouth. I even had a couple of banana peels lying on my pillow. I must have fallen asleep right after I did my last timed banana practice.
    But now I’m hiding here in stall number 1 of the boys’ bathroom. I want to get in one more banana practice before the school day ends … and I want to do it alone.
    So here goes. First, a little Positive Brain Approach, brought to me by shortwave brain train, channel 9.
    I can, I can, I can, I can …
    Second, I must change identities. And so I, Arlo Moore, fifth-grade boys’ bathroom outlaw, become Xexus, super banana-eating alien from the planet Zoidtron.
    Mission control to Project Bananazap: stand by for blast off. Five, four, three, two, one … Hi yo, banana, away!
    I’m taking small bites. With the skill of many hours of practice, I’m hurtling bite-sized banana bits into the outer reaches of my stomach. Faster, Xexus, faster. With a final surge of