WMG / Wayside School

The series is the American Version of Azumanga Daioh.

Seriously. The series and show features an Manchild Cloud Cuckoolander Teacher, Cows (in replace of cats) that roam the school, and the gym teacher is the Only Sane Man.

• I like how I was thinking of that show the whole time I was reading this. You may have a point there... maybe Osaka got sent to Japan after the school closed?
• There's a scene in the first book where a character pulls on another character's pigtails, and imagines the pigtails talking to him. If nothing else, Osaka's dreams definitely take place at Wayside.
• Or perhaps Azumanga Daioh is the Japanese version of Wayside School, since the first book came out in 1978, over twenty years before the series first appeared.

The 19th Story is in Another Dimension.

Ms. Zarves is Canada.

Wait, who was I talking about, again?

• The 19th story feeds into Degrassi which explains the whole black hole thing.

The 19th Story does not exist.

"Miss Zarves teaches the class on the 19th story. There is no Miss Zarves. Understand? Good; explain it to me." Okay — In the second book, Allison, for a while, didn't exist (for whatever reason) when she stumbled onto the 19th Story. The root cause of Miss Zarves' frustration in the third book is the fact that she and her class don't exist, and hence, nobody notices them (for obvious reasons) except The Men in Black because, well, they're Men in Black.

The 19th Story is a Matrix.

The Men in Black keep Miss Zarves and her students from leaving to maintain the conspiracy. One of them is the Builder who "forgot" to build it.

Miss Zarves is True Fae.

She imprisons children (And a cow) both real and imaginary and in her strange dimension where time is screwy. Among her students is an imaginary little brother made up by a student, an alias made by another, and a 32 year old woman who's never, ever been to a bathroom.

The cows that take over at the end of book 2 were intentionally placed.

They were covering up some governmental activity on Floor 19 over the next few weeks. This would explain how one of them ended up on Floor 19 in the third book.

The 19th story really is in Another Dimension, but does exist. The missing floor was caused by...

...the plan for there to be no 13th floor, since it is supposedly unlucky. Because this was put in sometime after the sideways construction started, they had to make some screwy adjustments once they realised they were now building a skyscraper instead of a horizontal building complex. The 13th floor was supposed to be the one that was empty, but they screwed that up too. So the result is that there is a 13th floor, but no 19th. The fact that somehow the 19th floor exists in another dimension is probably just a result of the general weirdness that surrounds the school.

The 19th story is being forced into an alternate dimension because everyone thinks it doesn't exist.

Fairly Self-Explanatory.

The entire school is a Tardis

Explains the weird infrastructure, the freaky-deaky teachers, the heroic staff that combat the teachers, being able to fall out of it with little injury...

• The temporally and dimensionally transcendent 19th floor...complete with perception filter...

The 19th story was built around the invisible Old One that caused the strange events and sideways building in the first place.

If the builders used anything remotely resembling blueprints, the rooms should have been sideways. Nobody noticed that the building was being built sideways until it was finished, and the builders didn't forget about the 19th story, the just forgot that they remembered it. It can't be Miss Zarves, although her memories of never being noticed may have been a result of the creature trying to make her completely dependent upon it. The halloween episode where the original teacher returned was all a mass hallucination. The 30th story is actually one of the least weird stories, and the stories closer to the 19th are too scary to knowingly put into a childrens' book.

• Stories about weirder and scarier floors would be awesome!

Wayside has the largest playground ever allotted to a 28 (29) class school.

The builders were given land to build a 30-room across, 1-story building. They made a 30-story, 1-room across building. The playground must be comparatively huge.

• This is actually canonical; I can't remember where, but one of the books specifically mention that the kids like having the school built that way for this very reason.
  • It's mentioned offhandedly in the introduction for the first book.

Louis arranged the vertical/horizontal dimension switch.

Because, as the future playground supervisor, his power would increase with the size of the playground, until the playground itself was greater than the school. (And, in the Wayside universe, nothing Does Not Work That Way.)

Wayside school was the school building designer's way of saying "I've got a giant tonker."

There was no mistake. If you think about it, the first floor (with the administrative offices and cafeteria) must be significantly larger than the 30-student classrooms. Especially if there's a gymnasium, the shape of the school is going to look a certain way.

• I can not confirm nor deny this, but an important note is that the cafeteria is on the fifteenth floor, not the first.

Wayside School was desgined by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Uh...yeah. A story that is in an alternate dimension, odd blueprints. What else would you think?

• I concur. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson could end up building a nonexistent floor in a skyscraper that was supposed to be a single story...

Alternatively, it was built by Cave Johnson

Do I even NEED an explanation?

• And the 19th floor is an Enrichment Center and Miss Zarves is GLaDOS!

Miss Zarves does exist!

Really! I returned a seating chart to her once that I found on the stairs above the eighteenth floor. The class pet is a cow. It has its own desk. That kid from the 30th story was there, ask her!

• Yeah, I'm just going to get the nurse now...
  • Get the nurse for who? Nobody said anything.
  • (on Walkie-Talkie) Send over the Attache case men.

Miss Zarves is a Time Lord.

'Nuff said.

• And the 19th story is her TARDIS!

The 19th story is purgatory

In Wayside School is Falling Down, when Allison is on the 19th story, the only other sane one there wonders if those on the 19th story are dead. Since it can't be Heaven or Hell...

• Wait, why can't it be Hell?
  • The possibility of the 19th Story being Hell was directly mentioned in the book without using the word:
    Mark Miller: Maybe we're dead. Maybe we died and went to-
    Allison: This isn't Heaven!
    Mark Miller: That wasn't what I was going to say.
    Allison: But she seems so nice. Could someone as nice as her really be the Devil?
    • It can't be Hell because Allison gets out. You never get out of Hell.
• Notice how the moment Allison tries to apply logic and rationality to the school (when she thinks that, because the 19th story is missing, her class is really on the 29th story), she ceases to exist to everyone at Wayside. And when does she finally escape? When she embraces the weirdness, thus redeeming herself for her sin of being logical and rational.

Wayside School is built upon a Hellmouth

It would explain the wierdness and everything...

The 19th Story is an SCP.

Call Dr. Clef.

• Actually the entire school is an SCP.
• And The Men in Black are Foundation personnel in charge of containment.

The 19th story is where people go when they are ignored too much

Miss Zarves explains in the third book that nobody ever noticed her growing up. Perhaps Bebe's parents really did have a son named Ray but they ignored him so much that he disappeared. Bebe still remembers him a little bit which is why she used his name in her lie. Perhaps that's why she called him her baby brother when he's clearly older than that (only a few years younger than Bebe). She remembers him being a baby. Allison ended up there after being ignored by her class but she managed to defy the system and get back. Nobody acknowledges the fact that Mark Miller is really Benjamin Nushmutt so on the 19th story it's reversed. The name that's ignored is the name that he's acknowledged as. Virginia and Nick's backgrounds are unknown but it's certainly possible that they were ignored to the point of non existence too.

• Additionally, the 19th story was ignored too. The teacher that was supposed to teach there quit for some reason (probably having something to do with the mixed up building or general weirdness) and they had so much trouble trying to find a good replacement that they gave up. After a few months of no one acknowledging the floor as anything other than another landing in the stair way, it became a place for ignored people.
• Also, there's the cow in Stranger. Why was it there? Because Louis pretended it didn't exist in chapter 1.

Myron will die.

In Wayside School is Falling Down, Myron chooses to be free instead of being safe. This seems to work because he doesn't have to learn ballroom dancing like the other students and they complain that he never has to do anything. So that should mean that he's not safe. Nothing has happened to him yet but it will. Plus, Myron seems like a really nice guy so maybe he is Too Good for This Sinful Earth.

• Well, given that all humans are mortal presumably Myron (and all other characters) will die eventually.

Floor 19 exists, people just joke.

When Allison goes there, it was All Just A Dream because the story was built in to the wall.

Wayside School exists on a discworld

Not the Discworld mind you, a discworld (perhaps one of the young discworlds that appear at the end of The Light Fantastic). Where the main Discworld runs on Narrative Causality Wayside's discworld runs on that special brand of logic that children follow.

The 19th floor is a room in The Dark Tower

Come on. It's the 19th floor. Filled with fictional characters. Need I say any more?

Wayside is in Seattle, and feeds into Ridgeway High School.

Wayside is in built on a leaking gas main

Admit it, this makes sense.

Wayside is the way it is because somebody with Fairy Godparents wished for it.

In a The Fairly OddParents! Non-Serial Movie, Mr. Crocker has a rant about fairies, in which he claims that fairies can make it so 2+2=fish. What's the very first "math" problem that gets taught in Sideways Arithmetic? ELF + ELF = FOOL!

Louis changed the ending of the last book to redeem Miss Nogard and hook up with her.

The first book actually states that Louis wrote them. Miss Nogard's misdeeds were actually exposed and she was given the same Laser-Guided Karma that the other evil teachers got. However, Louis was heartbroken because he was infatuated with her. So when he wrote the story, he changed the ending so his love redeemed her and they got together. Maybe he even added her Freudian Excuse.

• I had a feeling she might be a Creator's Pet, though I was thinking more in-reality as opposed to in-universe. Now if only I could figure out HOW they punished her.

The 19th Story is the afterlife for students who have died (and they age).

This is sort of like the above "The 19th Story is Purgatory" guess. When Wayside School was built, Miss Zarves was hired to be teach the 19th story. However, she was killed suddenly and the school felt it would be wrong to keep the floor open. Miss Zarves was looking forward to teaching and is so disappointed that she's able to stay and teach. The 19th story is treated as non-existent for so longer students think that it actually is and Miss Zarves has become a legend. Virginia and Nick were were young children when they died but continued to grow up in the afterlife of the 19th story. Ray Gunn was looking forward to attending Wayside School with Bebe but he died shortly after he started. Bebe feels that her parents romanticize his memory as the perfect angel so she acts out and blames him for her behavior. Allison's trip was a near death experience. Either she was almost killed by Ron and Leslie bumping into her (physics obviously works differently there) or her negative thoughts about her school while passing between the 18th and 20th stories caused her to be pulled there (maybe "they" thought that's where she would prefer). In the end she chooses to live. Mark Miller is a different boy than Benjamin Nushmutt (Allison didn't seem to think that they looked alike). Mark was a boy that Benjamin knew and was jealous of: he was more talented and successful, people liked him more and his name was less confusing. Mark Miller died soon before Benjamin came to Wayside School so he decided to take his identity in hopes that Mark's success will rub off on him. Because of this, Mark was in limbo on the 19th story (it is confusing). Once Benjamin admits the truth, Mark is able to pass on.

The 19th Story is the Astral Plane/The Wayside Collective Unconscious/Imagination Land

Think about it. It's an imaginary place populated by imaginary people - a classroom that was never built, taught by a teacher that was never hired, and populated by one boy who's name was misprinted, another boy who was made up, and a woman old enough to be a mother yet has never used a bathroom, and an ear from an unlikely Urban Legend winds up there. As such, their entire existence amounts to little more than a melting pot of the school's collective imagination, though occasionally real-world things (Allison and a Cow, for starters) get in through the cracks. Ms. Zarves, as such, is not malignant - she's just as imaginary as the rest, and is therefore just feeling her way through the act of teaching imaginary people lessons they'll never use.

Someone called Miss Zarves once worked at Wayside School.

I don't know, maybe she was a teacher who got sacked or a secretary who some of the students thought was a teacher even though nobody knew any of the kids in her class. Something had to have started this pervasive rumour that there's a nineteenth story and someone named Miss Zarves is the teacher between floors eighteen and twenty. Maybe Louis put the rumour in one of those stories he tells to the students.

The book takes place in Night Vale.

Come on, the weird occurrences, the places that simultaneously exist and don't, the daily announcements- it's basically what any grade school in Night Vale would be like.

• Can't be, not enough guns.
  • Now my knowledge on Night Vale isn't a little rusty, but don't they fear education? And if that series takes place in a desert, I heavily doubt every kid would own a stinky raincoat.
• Joseph Fink [https://twitter.com/PlanetofFinks/status/1342113118424592386 doesn't rule it out.]

The 19th story is a manifestation of everyone's subconscious.

This would explain why they all pretend it doesn't exist—on the most logical level, nobody at Wayside knows it exists. However, think about who and what is in there:-Ray, perhaps the little brother Beebee wanted but never got. Or a child her mother miscarried.-Virginia, a woman old enough to be the kids' parent despite the fact she's never left the classroom, even to use the bathroom. Perhaps she was a traumatized student with a disorder like PTSD, who everyone ignored and who escaped to the empty nineteenth floor for some peace.-The cow—there is in fact still a cow in the building, but if Louis acknowledged it, he'd go completely batty. Plus, he could never get effective help for said battiness because no one outside Wayside would believe such a crazy school and its denizens could actually exist.-Mark Miller/Benjamon Nushmutt: Whoever the kid is, he has a massive identity crisis, and the nineteenth floor is his way of coping.

If anyone visits the nineteenth floor, they are confronted with the deepest dreams and fears of their psychological subconscious. Or if, like Allison, they seem to get there via an injury or accident, they just see the aforementioned alternate dimension-type stuff and come to the conclusion that it was All Just a Dream. To add:

Miss Zarves is an Ax-Crazy Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant.

If during your trip to the nineteenth story you are exposed to your subconscious, she will give you a Sadistic Choice. Either remain in her classroom as a prisoner, aging forever with no one knowing where you are, or be killed using your greatest fear. For example, she would've let Louis be trampled by a herd of rampaging cows. Why does she do this? Because she had one of the worst childhoods ever, of course. What she describes in the book isn't the half of it; the rest was just deemed too thematically disturbing for young kids.

Miss Zarves is Mrs. Jewls, Louis, Mr and Mrs. Gorf, etc.

Miss Zarves takes place in all the teachers, Mrs. Jewls and Louis gets her always-giving-A personality from the second book, and Mrs. (and Mr.) Gorf's meanness, and much more. So high chance that Miss Zarves is all of their souls, seeing how it shows all of the "Made Up" kids are in her classroom, while most of them being fake from many teachers.

Miss Zarves is a Vex Gatelord.

She controls a place outside the bounds of time, thus no one knows of it's existence unless she gives someone access. And by gives I mean taking them captive in her realm, never to escape...

The three men with the attache cases are the devil.

They seem to be the ones responsible for Miss Zarves' situation and always mysteriously appear to "keep things

Ms. Jewels hates Todd.

Notice that Todd is the only one who gets in trouble, she sent herself home once, but how can it be a coincidence! Either she hates Todd, or she doesn't hate Todd, but the mean teacher inside her does! She always notices Todd talking but nobody else! The whole class can yell and not get in trouble at all, but if Todd even makes a move, he gets in trouble! She hates Todd!

• Well, in the "Mrs. Jewls" chapter, Todd is the first kid to speak out in class. She's probably just keeping a careful eye on him because of this.

• Alternatively ...

Mrs. Gorf cursed Todd.

And that's why he gets sent home on the kindergarten bus every day.

Think about- he was the one that led the charge that got them turned back into children, and he was the first one she looked for when she returned as a ghost. Also, the book all but calls her a witch, so it's very possible that she cursed him.

• I can't believe I never noticed this before! Brilliant!

Mean teachers have a nice teacher inside them.

Mean teachers who hate everyone have a nice teacher who loves everybody inside them, while teachers that single out one student to bully have a teacher inside them that hates everyone but that one student!

• Somewhat confirmed with Mrs. Drazil in Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger. It's revealed she was initially a very cruel teacher, but loosened up over the years. That being said, don't let her see any of the old students she hated...

The 19th story was not built because the builder's religion prevented him from doing so

Yep.

Joe works out numbers subconsciously.

• This is how Joe can count incorrectly and still somehow get the correct answer. While Joe is counting wrong such as "A thousand, a million, three" he's actually thinking "one, two, three" but doesn't realize it and/or can't properly voice it.

Louis is The Builder.

He has it on good authority that the builder is sorry and seems to know everything there is to know about the school. He becomes the yard teacher and general school caretaker to atone for his sins. Taking on this responsibility has created an older, wiser Louis, far beyond the days of rotated buildings and missing stories.

Wayside School was built by a construction company from Springfield.

One owned by Mr. Burns, of all people. The builder was Homer Simpson, who had the blueprints nailed to his desk sideways.

The town where Wayside School is located in has some kind of supernatural element to it.

It's unique to the town, as it's implied in the books that the rest of the world is as normal and mundane as ours. This supernatural element manifests in the 19th story that may or may not exist, the mysterious men in black, superpowered individuals, people with extra body parts, the laws of physics not working, and the general wackiness that takes place every day. Wayside School is where the supernatural energy is the strongest and acts as a magnet of sorts. If a superpowered person is located outside of the town, they will eventually end up at Wayside School.

Ms. Frizzle used to teach at Wayside.

And took the bus with her when she left.

There will eventually be sixteen books in the series.

The covers of the current (as of 2022) editions of the first three books have two floors on them: Sideways Stories has the top two floors, Falling Down has two somewhere in the middle, and Gets a Little Stranger has the ground floor and the next one up (first or second depending on regional terminology). Beneath the Cloud of Doom breaks the trend by having the top floor and a view of the roof, necessary given its storyline. Even with that break in conceptual structure, the idea behind this WMG is that they will eventually build an entire Wayside School from book covers, meaning that twelve more books are necessary.

There will be 20 numbered books in the series.

• There will be 19 books total in the series, but to keep up with the 19th floor, the 19th book will actually be numbered the 20th instead.

Possible final words of the next twelve books...

There's been a running gag through the books so far in having the final sentence bee "Everybody [word rhyming with 'oo']-ed." Sideways Stories has "Everybody booed." Falling Down has "Everybody mooed." Gets a Little Stranger has "Everybody oohed." and Beneath the Cloud of Doom has "Everybody chewed." That means the next theoretical twelve books will be some of the following:

• mewed
• stewed
• cooed
• glued
• queued
• shooed
• brewed
• spewed (possibly a little too gross-out for the series)
• pooed (ditto the above)
• sued
• viewed
• imbued
• screwed (as in with literal screws and screwdrivers)
• shewed (maybe too obscure of a word, but it could be introduced to the readers ahead of time)
• eschewed (ditto the above)
• shoed (or some other Perfectly Cromulent Word)
• some nonsense word made up by the characters a la "goozack" or "mugworm griblick"

Wendy Nogard was never a good person.

Wendy Nogard being left at the altar is what turned her mean and vindictive, but she never was a decent person to begin with. That's shown by how she uses her mind reading powers to seduce a man by telling him exactly what he wants to hear, to the point of buying a book and a dog to complete the deception. It's likely Wendy's entire relationship with her boyfriend was based entirely on lies to avoid conflict, which isn't healthy. Wendy keeps her ear secret until she's literally at the altar because she suspects that her boyfriend will abandon her if he knows about it, which he does in large part because she hadn't told him about it a lot sooner. It's because they never had any fights or anything to help each other look past their flaws that Wendy's boyfriend is shocked at the first sign of a flaw in Wendy and bails in a panic. Wendy has always been a Manipulative Bastard, just not an actively malicious one until after the breakup, and it wasn't until the end of the third book that she actually becomes a good person.