The Camping Trip

THE CAMPING TRIP

Jones and John weren’t very ordinary. Their parents also let them do anything they wanted. Jones and John always wore matching sweaters. Also, they hated to do schoolwork and homework. The brothers were near-sighted from video gaming a lot, and they had to wear glasses. They both had black hair. John was fifteen, and Jones was six.

One time when they went camping in Mexico, they had a dangerous adventure. They were river rafting on a piranha-infested watercourse when they noticed a piranha in their boat. John, who thought he knew lots about handling piranhas, started poking it. The brothers held the piranha still, tied it up, and threw it into the river; the piranha pulled their boat through the waterway until a big hungry crocodile snapped it up.

After there “boat-puller” was eaten, the boat splashed to a halt and began to shudder violently. Jones saw a ton of crocodiles biting at the sides of the boat. The boat was shuddering, and Jones bounced up for a second. When he knew the boat could have held up no longer, he threw their Ziploc bag full of meatballs behind them, and they escaped in the boat.

Soon after the crocodiles left, they realized that they had missed the only “Return a Boat” station and were now headed into the unknown. John saw a waterfall up ahead, which meant nothing good. All of them had heard stories of people who died falling down waterfalls. Suddenly, the kids broke into a cold sweat. Their hands were trembling.

Jones cried out “I want my mommy!” John however, looked around cautiously.

Just in time, John noticed parachutes in the raft in case they went off a cliff. They put them on and jumped off the raft quickly, for they did not want to plummet down the waterfall. John spotted an island, and headed directly for it.

When John landed, he noticed that Jones was missing. In the distance, he saw a parachute with a person slowly drifting towards the big orange, yellow, and red horizon.

Suddenly, it hit him: he had not informed Jones of the island. To the other side of him he noticed fires and tents. John got out his binoculars for sighting birds and saw their own magnificent campsite.

He looked toward Jones one last time. Jones had almost no hope; he was going into the open sea. Actually, he had some hope. John sent up a flare he had forgotten about, and a rescue boat came two minutes later. Jones had to be saved. John informed the surprised captain of this, and the captain quickly maneuvered toward Jones.

When the last miniscule bit of hope was almost gone, Jones’ shirt was caught on the tall antenna pole. John came out and rescued Jones from flying off the pole. Jones was happy and hyper. John was not. John gave Jones a long lecture.

Then, instead of listening to the lecture John gave, Jones jumped around the boat, and eventually fell down from exhaustion saying, “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!” Instead of falling on the boat, he fell off the boat. He stood in the air for a second, looked down, and gulped. He fell right on the tip of a spiked rock. His face turned as red as a very ripe strawberry. His mouth was opened up so big he could swallow the Great Wall of China.

He reminded himself, depressed, “Never fall on a rock.”

In the meantime, John didn’t know what happened until he noticed that Jones was missing again. He rolled his eyes, and told the captain what happened.

After that, the captain got kind of mad, waving his hat around, pounding the windows, and saying, “I hate this job!” John was calmer; he pushed the captain’s wheelchair out of the control room, locked the door, and turned backward toward Jones.

He saw Jones doggy paddling around in the water. He came out of the control room and pulled him to safety.

The captain, however, was drunk. He had gotten a bottle of whisky and drank it in a matter of seconds. He swam to the bottom of the boat, and pulled the gas hatch out because he was drunk.

After that, gas spilled everywhere, and the boat started to sink because water started filling the gas container. The captain passed away in the gas. Jones did not notice and accidentally dropped a match he was playing with in the water, igniting it. John found a dynamite six-pack in the boat. He tied it to the back of the boat, where it was ignited by the burning water. The boat propelled itself to shore. The kids made their way back to the camp, and started packing everything up. After all, it was a tiring day. Sadly, they could never find their sleeping bags.

Jones said, “I don’t like to sleep anyway.”

When they looked into their house, John smacked himself in the face. There, right in their backpack, was their phone and sleeping bags.

Steve's Busy Morning

Briiiiiing!... Briiiiiing!... Briiiiing!...

The alarm clock read 7:30 AM, 1/2/13.

“Steve! Wake up and smell the orange juice!” Steve’s mother yelled.

It was the first day of school after winter break. Steve, a tall and skinny boy who was now 12 years old, yawned. It’s going to be a long day, he thought. He got dressed as slowly as possible and packed up his backpack with the speed of a turtle.

“Get down here right this moment, or I’m going to toss you out the window!” his mother shrieked.

Steve almost jumped right out of the window from surprise, right then and there, from the fifteenth floor of the old, rickety apartment building. He grimaced. Sometimes he just couldn’t understand his family, the Bopkins, especially his mother. He plodded through the hallway and plopped into his chair.

“Eat up your breakfast! Hup, hup, hup! Chomp, swallow, chomp, and swallow! The early bird gets the worm! Now hop to it!”

His mother had reached boiling point already and her temperature was still going up. Steve wisely got out of the way before she blew. He went upstairs to brush his teeth, and then ran out the door with his backpack in hand. Halfway to the school, he saw his mother and father going out to work – and an unidentifiable flying object was hurtling from his mother’s car into his father’s. What crazy parents I have, he thought.

When he got to school, he checked his watch  for the time and his backpack for his homework. It was 8:40. 20 minutes and elementary school would start.  4^th grade math – check. 4^th grade reading homework – check. 4^th grade spelling – check. 4^th grade short story writing – huh? Steve wondered where he could have left it. Then it hit him, just like that object he saw his mother throw hit his dad, except this was in his brain. He remembered – in his hurriedness to escape his enraged mom, he had forgotten his writing assignment in his room!

He checked his watch – it was 8:44 already! Steve wondered what to do. He could get a late assignment, and possibly lose his free time for the week, or he could get back to the house and get in with the spare key. He couldn’t decide. Tick…tock…tick…tock… time was running out! He eenie-meenie-miney-moed the situation, and came up with the decision he would go back home. He would need to get back to the house fast.

He sprinted through Mr. Greenbaum’s rosebushes, hurdled over Knick and Knack, Mrs. Henderson’s two dogs, and… landed right in a mud puddle. What a quick way to end his trip. He got up and dripped mud all over the place. He decided to take a risky shortcut – it was already 8:48! He flew over Mr. Smith’s lawn, and was stopped by who but Mr. Smith himself, the person who picked weeds out of his perfect lawn with tweezers.

“You juvenile delinquent!! You lawn-ruiner!!!! You evil, dumb, wicked, annoying, insane, ridiculous–”

“Sorry, sir, but I really have to get going. Why don’t you clean up your lawn a little?” Steve asked. Then, he ran away, towards that distant  apartment building where he lived.

He rode up to his floor, stepped out, and ran to his door. He pushed the doorbell three times, then paused, and pushed it eight times. Nothing happened. That should have activated the key drop mechanism, but it didn’t! he thought. He repeated the procedure. Nothing happened.

“It’s 8:51 and I don’t know what to do!” he complained out loud.

Suddenly, an idea whistled through his brain. “I got it!” he yelled. He “borrowed” the flower pot from in front of the elevator and used it to repeatedly smash against the door. After he hit triple digits in the amount of total hits, and was just about to give up, the door gave way and he found himself in the living room with a shattered flower pot, a lot of dirt, and a prickly rose.

I’ve done it! he thought. I broke through the door of my house, and now I can get my homework! He ran into his room, got his homework, and scrambled out the door. He jumped into the elevator.

“Oops,” he said, “I don’t think I should have done that.” Suddenly, the elevator plummeted downward and he was engulfed in total darkness. He had broken the old, weak cables and the unstable electrical system with his powerful jump. He realized there was no safety brake because the engineers had somehow forgotten it!

The elevator plummeted downwards, and after what seemed like hours of bouncing around and flipping upside down, the elevator landed on the spring at the bottom of the shaft. The elevator bounced to a stop. After he pried open the doors and walked into the dusty lobby, he examined his muddy watch. It read 1:42 PM.

“What happened?” Steve asked himself. He examined the clock on the wall. It read 8:56. The watch must have broken somehow when I was slammed against the walls, Steve thought, and I must get to school fast! He ran out of the lobby, pushed through the door, and rushed to the school.

When he got there, he noticed that the school clock read 8:59. He scrambled for his classroom line, and when he got there, he felt relieved. A few kids started snickering.

“What’s up with the brown stuff on your shirt, Bopkins? Did you have an accident?”

“Steve Bopkins, please come here right now,” the teacher, Ms. Chen, noticed the commotion and said, “I want to know what you’ve been doing this morning.”

Steve walked slowly to the teacher’s desk. Fiddlesticks, he thought, now I’ve done it. Ms. Chen looked at him sternly.

“Is there anything you would like to tell me, Steve?” Ms. Chen asked.

“Well, it’s a long story. I tripped in a puddle of mud while I was running home to get my homework, and then I broke into my house, crashed the only elevator in the apartment building, and ruined my watch.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You kids crack me up!” Ms. Chen laughed. What Ms. Chen didn’t know was that Steve was actually being honest.

Now, Steve Bopkins is in the hospital because his mom threw him out the window.