Free The Kid Who Became President by Dan Gutman Page A

Neil Armstrong!” she shrieked. “Louis Armstrong was a trumpet player. How do you expect to run this country if you think a trumpet player walked on the moon?”
    I raised my hand timidly.
    â€œWhat do you want?” Mrs. Miller barked.
    â€œMay I be excused?” I asked. “I need to use the bathroom.”
    â€œYou should have thought of that before,” she said disgustedly. “Get in your seat. Today you’re going to learn the history of the United States. If you want to be a good president, you have to know your history.”
    I slunk back around my desk and sat down. I wasn’t feeling very presidential.
    For the next hour and a half, Mrs. Miller taught me the history of the United States. From the beginning. She told me how the earth used to be a big molten rock spinning through space. Over millions of years, it gradually cooled and the continents formed. They all floated around until North America ended up where it was.
    I was tempted to ask her if she knew all this stuff from memory, but I didn’t dare. I snuck a peek at my watch. She had been talking for an hour, and she was only up to the Ice Age. By the time she got to World War I, I figured, I’d be her age. My bladder felt like it was about to explode.
    Finally, Mrs. Miller finished the lesson. She stopped at the point where human beings had arrived in North America, but they hadn’t learned how to use tools yet. Mrs. Miller said tomorrow she would pick up where we left off. She gave me a huge pile of homework. Then she marched out of the Oval Office.
    Â 
    Not a second too soon! I ran to the bathroom just before the dam burst. When I got back to the Oval Office, Chief of Staff Lane Brainard was waiting for me.
    â€œSo, how did it go with Mrs. Miller?” Lane asked.
    â€œMiller the Killer,” I moaned. I told Lane what Mrs. Miller had taught me and he just laughed.
    â€œThe president doesn’t need to know any of that prehistoric junk,” he snorted. “That’s why it’s called pre historic. It’s before history began. I can tell you everything you need to know about American history in ten minutes.”
    â€œOn your mark … get set … go,” I said, looking at my watch.
    â€œOkay, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492,” Lane began, “but Indians were already here so he really didn’t discover anything. And besides, Columbus only went to the Bahamas on his first trip over.”
    â€œMy folks went there on vacation once,” I added.
    â€œGreat, Moon,” Lane said, unimpressed. “So tell me what happened after Columbus arrived?”
    â€œUh, he returned to England?”
    â€œ Spain , Moon. You really don’t know anything, do you? The next important thing that happened was that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom in 1620. You know, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving, all that stuff.”
    â€œWait a minute,” I interrupted. “Didn’t anything important happen during the hundred years or so between Columbus and the Pilgrims?”
    â€œNothing that you need to concern yourself with, Moon.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “So what happened next?”
    â€œThe British established the thirteen colonies.”
    â€œThirteen is bad luck.”
    â€œIt was for them, ” Lane agreed. “They taxed the colonies heavily, so the colonists revolted in 1775. Paul Revere rode. Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’ Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And George Washington led the colonies to victory in the Revolutionary War.”
    â€œAnd he was elected the first president,” I said.
    â€œRight. And the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in 1787. Everything was cool going into the 1800s.”
    â€œWow,” I marveled. “You just covered two hundred years in five minutes.”
    â€œBut in the next