Awesome / Wayside School

Sideways Stories From Wayside School

• In Todd's story, after he has his name written on the board and a check-mark put next to it (getting it circled after this means he'll get sent home early), two robbers enter the classroom, thinking it's a bank. When the men realize their mistake and complain that they climbed up 30 flights of stairs for nothing, Todd says they do have something valuable: knowledge. He then picks up Joy's nearly-full workbook and gives it to the robbers, prompting them to have a Heel–Face Turn and leave (bonus points because Joy was responsible for getting Todd into trouble in the first place). Of course, he still gets sent home early, but when he leaves, everybody (even Shari, but except for Mrs. Jewls) stands and applauds him.
• In Sharie's story, she falls out of the classroom window while sleeping. Louis is all the way on the other side of the playground when he sees her falling - and he runs the entire length of the field, passing through the various playground instruments in a sort of obstacle course, and catches her right before she hits the ground. Appropriately enough, the other students cheer.
• Louis gets another one in Terrence's story. Terrence has been behaving like a major Jerkass, kicking all the balls over the fence and then insulting the other kids. So what does Louis do when they complain to him? He kicks Terrence over the fence.
• In Stephen's story, he dispatches Mrs. Gorf's ghost by hugging her.
• When Louis asks D.J. why he is always so happy, D.J. replies, "You need a reason to be sad. You don't need a reason to be happy."

Wayside School Is Falling Down

• In one story, Paul falls out the window and grabs onto a brick. Leslie saves him by holding her pigtails out and pulling him up with the pigtails he loves to pull.
  • This awesome moment leads up to another one later in the story: When the Evil Teacher inside Mrs. Jewls shows itself and threatens to throw pickle brine on Leslie's pigtails, Paul returns the favor by directing the brine away from Leslie and onto Mrs. Jewls. The brine ultimately cures her and the evil Mrs. Jewls is never heard from again.
• The daily grind of school is making Myron feel as if he were in a cage. Although this is a very common feeling, Myron actually acted on it and retaliated by skipping class and heading down to the school's Creepy Basement, something nobody else would dare to do. In the basement, he is confronted by the three men with the attache case, who offer him total freedom in exchange for his safety. Myron opts for freedom. He goes back upstairs, and his class is having a test. He doesn't do it. And there's not a thing anyone can do about it, because he's free.
• When Allison expresses her disbelief of the nineteenth story, she finds herself trapped there. How does Allison get back to the real world? She mimicks the behavior of her classmates in Mrs. Jewls' class.
• When Todd's cute toy actually gets him out of trouble with Mrs. Jewls, Joy is determined to steal the toy for herself. So she gets Todd back in trouble with Mrs. Jewls and makes her move while Todd is putting his name on the discipline list. What Joy didn't know was that Todd turned his toy from a cute puppy to a man-eating wolf, and the toy bites her on the pinky, giving Todd the ultimate revenge.
  • It gets better. Todd mentions that the toy has three neat qualities. He shows two of them...
    Joy: How do I make it let go?!?
    Todd: (smiles) That's the best part.

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

• Louis plays "Way-High-Up-Ball" with some of the students, where the goal is to throw a ball as high up the building as possible. The rules aren't important except for one where the ball has to touch the wall to count, what is important is that Louis throws the ball to the 19th floor. Which doesn't exist.
• Miss Nogard plans to humiliate Mac by calling on him for show and tell when she knows that he didn't bring anything. He ends up making up an entertaining speech about his shoelace off the top of his head and gets applauded at the end.
• When Mrs. Gorf's vengeful son substitute teaches Mrs. Jewls' class and steals the kids' voices with his third nostril, lunch teacher Miss Mush knows something is wrong when Mr. Gorf ignorantly uses super Jerkass Kathy's voice to wish her a nice day. So Miss Mush smashes a pepper cream pie in Mr. Gorf's face, causing him to sneeze so hard that his nose falls off and all the voices stored in it return to their rightful owners.
• While she is subsitute teaching, Mrs. Drazil scares her former student Louis into shaving his mustache. The shave turns him from a fun Manchild to a boring by-the-book authority figure. When Louis sabotages recess by painting the blacktop black (as instructed by a professional handbook), Joy grabs Louis's manual and throws it in the black paint.
• The students' plan to get rid of Mrs. Drazil. Not only is it effective, it had possibly fatal results.

Sideways Arithmetic series

• Problem #19 of More Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School gets eliminated like so: Mrs. Jewls tells her class that she will give a pop quiz, and that she is not allowed to let them find out in advance exactly when they must take it. One of the students points out that Mrs. Jewls can't give a pop quiz on Friday, then; if she doesn't give it before that day, the kids will know when it will come. As a result, she tells them the pop quiz can come on any day from Monday to Thursday, before one of the students reminds her they can figure out what day she'll hold it if she doesn't do so before Thursday. The kids reject the possibilities of holding the quiz on Wednesday or Tuesday in the same manner. Mrs. Jewls eventually tells the class that the pop quiz will come on Monday, but realizes that she has told them when they must take it, and thus decides not to give the quiz at any time during the following week.

Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom

• Sharie plays with her umbrella when a strong gust of wind lifts her into the air. She rises up the the 30th story and jumps in through the window. This allows her to beat the late bell.
• Dr. Pickle gets two:
  • He discovers how to cure himself of a contagious Frozen Face and breaks the cycle by shattering his mirror, rejecting the chance to become a world-famous psychiatrist.
  • He uses hypnosis to get Kathy to Take A Level In Kindness. The truly awesome moment is that this turns into genuine Character Development for Kathy even after the act of Dr. Pickle smashing his mirror breaks the spell, because the experience gave Kathy the realization that Good Feels Good.