Poppy came sliding into the room and said, “Mum! I’ve got a question!” Mum was sitting in the big, soft comfy chair reading her phone and holding a cup of coffee. She said, “Hmmm?” and took a sip from her cup.
Poppy slowed down and said in her quiet voice, “Mum, you didn’t hear me.” Jack came spilling into the room and he said, “Yes, mum. Please put your phone down.” Mum looked up and said, “Phone? What?” And suddenly the three of them burst out laughing and mum only just managed to put down her coffee before it spilled. She rested the phone on the big padded arm of the chair and said, “Right. OK. You’ve got a question? Well, you’ve come to the right person. You ask me and I’ll tell you.”
Poppy said, “Mum, it’s school. Things have got seriously out of hand.” Mum sat up. “Trouble at school?” Jack nodded. He said, “There’s shouting and teachers in the office and no-one knows what to do.” Poppy said, “Mum, we need you.”
Mum was leaning forward in her enormous chair. “If things are out of hand then its easy. We just tell the headmaster. Mr Scratch. He’s a nice man.” Jack and Poppy shook their heads. “No, mum. He already knows. And I think he can’t do anything about it.” Jack said, “Someone needs to go quick! Go and sort it all out.”
Mum slumped backwards in the chair so that the gigantic arms looked like they were wrapping around her. She made an I’m-thinking-hard face. Then she said, “OK. Tell me what’s happened.”
Jack and Poppy threw themselves into the saggy, floppy chair and wriggled around until they and mum were packed in tight. Like biscuits in a long thin crackly packet.
Poppy said it had all begun when a big truck had pulled up across the road from the school that morning. Jack had been outside when it came and he’d seen everything. He said, “The truck was covered in splashes of different colours. And there were ladders and long pieces of wood and an enormous flat thing all wrapped up in plastic. That plastic bubble wrap stuff.”
He said men got out of the truck and started digging and hammering and lifting and arranging. Kids from school were starting to come out of their classes to look. The truck was just across the road, but nobody could quite see what was on it?
“The men finished at lunchtime,” Poppy said, “and finally we all saw what that big flat thing was. It was a screen. An enormous screen.” “And,” Jack added, “the men had pointed it right at our school. Just across the road.”
Then he and Poppy explained what had happened next. All the kids had been watching. They were hanging out the classroom windows, peering around the corner of the library, pressing against the school fence, asking what it was for. No-one knew. A girl in Poppy’s class said, “I think it’s a special tv.” Everyone nodded and hoped the volume would be turned up loud.
Finally a teacher came out and shooed everyone inside to their classes. But that didn’t stop the students wondering what the big screen was for. The fat boy hoped it was for gaming. His sister said out loud that she wanted the screen to show kids’ paintings. Others talked about what they wanted on the screen. And slowly, slowly the noise level rose. Kids were calling and some where even shouting. Higher and higher. All the classes were talking now. The noise was deafening.
Then Poppy’s teacher got a message on her phone. She gasped and rushed from the room, waving her phone. As she disappeared out the door she called out, “Kids, find some school work to do! I’ll be back soon!” Jack’s teacher also rushed out of her classroom. All the teachers had got a message. And they were all rushing out of the classrooms to the headmaster’s office. Running and jostling and crowding into the small room where Mr Scratch was sitting behind his big desk with a very worried look on his face.
He said, “We’ve got to stop the big screen! See?” The teachers turned and looked across the road … and couldn’t believe their eyes! They gasped. They put their hands over their mouths. No! Surely this couldn’t happen!
But it had. There, across the road, right in front of the school, the men had turned on the big screen and a movie was playing. Not an ordinary movie. Rather, a strange, jumping movie. It had loud music and lots of actors and changing colours. It was a film about a make-believe school. An upside down school. In the movie school the kids were teaching the teachers!
In the headmaster’s room the real teachers waved their arms in the air and shouted, “This is terrible!” The headmaster jumped up on his big desk and started to do a stop-this-at-once dance.
Outside the kids the kids had seen the movie start. They poured out of their classes. Great crowds of them were yelling and pushing and pressing against the fence to get a look. The fat boy yelled, “This movie is so good!” His sister waved a pen and paper in the air and shouted for everyone to sign a petition. She said, “Let’s change the school. Let’s teach the teachers!”
At that point Jack and Poppy had looked at each other, and dashed home. Poppy came sliding in to mum and said, “Things at school have got seriously out of hand.”
Well, by now mum was out of her chair and all action. She jabbed on her phone and called dad. “Come home straight away, dear. There’s an emergency!”
She spun around and looked at Jack and Poppy. “Right,” she said. “There’s one more person we need to get. The one person who can sort all this out.”
Jack and Poppy grinned. “Mrs Threadbare!” Mum said, “Exactly! Let’s go and see if she’ll come with us.”
Mrs Threadbare stood in the doorway of her house, the home next to Jack and Poppy’s, the one with the weeds under the letterbox. Her mouth dropped wide open as Jack and Poppy explained. She pushed her glasses more firmly on her nose and frowned. “Hmm,” she said, “there’s only one thing that can stop this. And I’ve got exactly what’s needed. Give me one minute. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared into her house and quick as a flash returned to the doorstep holding her big bulging handbag. She pulled her floppy hat tight on her head, picked up her walking stick and said, “Let’s go.”
They marched to the gate. Mum came bundling out onto the footpath. Dad’s car pulled up with a squeal of brakes. He threw open the door and they all piled in. “Hold on!” dad called. And they rocketed off down the road. Flying like the wind towards the school.
…
Dad stopped the car across the road from the school next to the big screen. The movie was still spinning and swirling and making lots of noise. The film had kids standing in front of classrooms and rows and rows of teachers sitting at desks.
In the real school, the real kids where pressing against the fence listening and calling out. Behind them Mr Scratch was doing a please-stop-and-go-back-to-class dance. The real teachers were at the back gasping and wringing their hands and gaping.
Mrs Threadbare got out of the car. Slowly she walked in front of the big screen and adjusted her glasses. She had a long look at the movie. Then she nodded to herself and muttered something and walked around to the back of the screen. In the middle was a small, white button. Mrs Threadbare looked at it. She frowned. Jack and Poppy went tense. Mum and Dad held their breath. Across the road the kids went quiet. Mr Scratch stopped his dance. The real teachers were frozen still.
Mrs Threadbare slowly reached up for the switch. And clicked it.
The movie stopped. Nobody moved. There wasn’t a sound. Mrs Threadbare smiled. She reached into her big old handbag and gently pulled out a handful of something. She said, “Is there anyone here who’d like to have one of these ? And take it back to their classroom? And start their real lessons again, with their real teachers?”
For a second no-one moved. Then there was a big cheer from the kids. They came laughing and running out of the school gate, across the road to Mrs Threadbare, picked up a lollipop and went sucking and smiling back to their classes. “We missed you!” they said as their teachers came in.
…
Well, Jack and Poppy could hardly believe their eyes. They talked about it all the way home in the car. Dad said it reminded him of the time Jesus went to a town and stopped a man who was so disturbed he’d been making it dangerous for everyone. Poppy said, “I remember that. Mum read us the story the other night.” Mum nodded. And reached for a round tin with something clunky and heavy inside.