Headscratchers / Wayside School

• The Rule of Funny trope seems to be tailor-made for this series. But even with that in mind, there are still a couple of things that this troper can't wrap his mind around.
  • First off, the whole nineteenth-story dilemma. If there is no nineteenth story, then the thirtieth story should really be the twenty-ninth. Allison actually lampshades this midway through the second book, in the chapters about the nineteenth story. In fact...
  • Second off, Allison's side story in the second book. Are we supposed to believe that she stepped into an alternate dimension, or had some kind of dream?
  • Third off, Mrs. Gorf. In the very first chapter, she's portrayed as a mean teacher who turns naughty kids into apples...only to be turned into an apple and eaten by Louis. But in the subsequent books, and even later on in the same book, everyone talks about Mrs. Gorf's disappearance as if it were a mystery. I can buy the other classes and teachers not knowing what happened to Mrs. Gorf, but the kids in the thirtieth class were the ones who got rid of Mrs. Gorf. So why do they seem to lose their memories of the incident and wonder what happened to their old teacher?
    • The kids in the thirtieth story do remember what happened, and there's no indication otherwise; they only treat it as a mystery around others (including Mrs. Jewls) because they're afraid to tell the truth. The mystery, such as it is, is that her ghost keeps appearing at random after this incident, so this is what's confusing the students.
• How on earth was the whole debacle about Wayside School's construction allowed to happen in the first place? We're repeatedly told that the school was supposed to be one story high, with thirty classrooms in a row, but instead, the building is thirty stories high with each classroom atop one another (and the builder said he was very sorry). Even if you apply the Rule of Funny, how the heck did nobody catch this egregious mistake till long after the construction was over? And was the builder ever sued for breach of contract? (Plus the whole issue with the nineteenth story, which is a whole other can of worms...)
  • Frankly, this troper never understood how the builders managed to get that confused and botch it up in the first place. Were they really that dense?
  • Why would they sue? He said he was very sorry.
  • If they were counting on the building being ready by a specified date, they might not have had time to have it torn down and rebuilt without causing major havoc. They could have decided that since it could still serve its purpose, it would be better to use the building as-is rather than delay the opening of the school by however long it would take to rebuild it.
• Why, exactly, does Mrs. Jewls behave like a Jerkass to One to Todd? In the first book alone, it's a Running Gag that he always gets sent home early on the kindergarten bus as punishment for misbehavior. Still, on some of those occasions, it happens due to circumstances he had no control over. In fact, he's often punished for the exact same offenses committed by other students, yet those students don't get any punishment whatsoever (a prime example is Deedee, who Todd collaborates within her plan to get out of class early by dressing her up as a dead rat. Still, only Todd gets punished for it). Even worse is that Joy, one of the resident jerks, gets Todd into trouble in his keynote story and gets no direct punishment from Mrs. Jewls for it (though she does get Laser-Guided Karma of a different sort). It honestly gives the impression that Mrs. Jewls has some kind of grudge against Todd for some unexplained reason, and it's an especially troubling stance for a teacher to take against a student. So, again, WHY does she treat him so unfairly?
  • I think it's supposed to be a Take That! towards teachers who punish their students for the slightest mistakes even if they really didn't do anything bad. Plus, the first three books were written when stuff like this was going on in schools.
  • It's generally implied that she doesn't target him on purpose, but that for some reason he just has rotten luck such that the things he does always get noticed. However, that doesn't mean there's not something subconscious going on causing Mrs. Jewls to interpret his behavior more harshly, even if she doesn't mean to. (This could also be a self-reinforcing situation; once the baseline is set that Todd gets into trouble regularly, Mrs. Jewls would interpret his behavior through that lens, which would then mean he'd get in more trouble, and so on.)