Joe (book chapter)

Illustrated by Tim Heitz.

"**Joe**" is the third chapter of *Sideways Stories from Wayside School*.

## Sypnosis

Mrs. Jewls tries to teach Joe how to count, but he experiences difficulty getting the numbers in order.

## Plot

The chapter introduces the readers to Joe, a kid with curly hair who doesn't know how much he has because he can't count properly, but for some reason he always ends up at the correct answer anyway. Mrs. Jewls asks him about this, but Joe shrugs it off, saying he already knows how to count. Mrs. Jewls keeps him inside at recess to give him some extra help with his counting. She asks him to count to ten, but when he counts, he says ten different numbers along the way, but the numbers aren't in any kind of order, and some of them are even higher than ten. Mrs. Jewls decides it is time he finally learns. She places five pencils on his desk, and requests that he counts them, and while he does get the proper answer of five pencils, he gets there entirely wrong. Mrs. Jewls suspects Joe was just lucky, and places a batch of potatoes on his desk. Joe once again counts randomly but stops at the right quantity. She places three books on his desk, only to get the same result.

Mrs. Jewls decides to attempt teaching him how to count to ten correctly, which Joe is able to get down pretty quickly. But this doesn't help either. When Mrs. Jewls places six erasers on Joe's desk and asks him to count them, he counts to ten, counting right but getting the number of erasers wrong. A confused Joe remarks that when he counts wrong he gets the right answer, while when he counts right he gets the wrong answer. Getting frustrated, Mrs. Jewls bangs her head against the wall five times. Joe tries to count how many times she does it, at first by counting to ten, but then he tries again by counting wrong and gets five, and Mrs. Jewls reluctantly accepts.

By the end of recess, Joe has failed to make progress. The other students return to class and ask what was happening with Joe. Mrs. Jewls tells them that she was teaching Joe to count properly, but Maurecia and Joy laugh at him for it. Maurecia and Joe threaten to fight, but Mrs. Jewls breaks it up and writes Maurecia's name under the discipline list. Joe feels bad about being unable to count correctly, and feels confused, but Mrs. Jewls assures that he'll get it someday, and one day he might wake up and know how. Joe wonders what he's doing in school if all he has to do is wake up one morning to understand something, and Mrs. Jewls tells him that school simply speeds up the process; if Joe hadn't gone to school, it may have taken him 70 years to learn how to count, and by then he wouldn't have hair on his head. True to Mrs. Jewls' word, Joe wakes up the very next day and realizes that he is indeed able to count correctly. He counts every hair on his head, totaling to 55,006.

## Characters

* Joe
* Mrs. Jewls
* John
* Todd
* Joy (debut)
* Maurecia

## Trivia

* Joy is first mentioned in this chapter.
* This is the first time potatoes appear in the *Wayside School* series.
* While it is implied Joe has a lot of hair, as seen from a problem in *More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School*, which claims he has more hair than Dana, who is stated to have long hair, 55,006 is actually below average, with 100,000 being typical for people with black or brown hair, 150,000 for blondes, and 90,000 for redheads. All of these numbers are larger than the 55,006 on Joe's head.
* To listen to the audio, click here.

## Gallery

Dennis Hockerman illustrationJulie Brinckloe illustrationAdam McCauley illustration
### Foreign editions

Peter Allen illustration (UK)Unknown illustrator (China, Traditional Chinese)Satoshi Kitamura illustration (Japan)Unknown illustrator (China, Simplified Chinese)