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.