Stupid Acts

Stupid Acts

My 7th grade L.A. teacher told me there are three reasons authors write memoirs. The first is to tell the story of their lives and the events. The second is to share with the world a lesson they have learned to save other people some time. And everykid who has ever sat in a class where a teacher asks ‘why did the author write this?’ thinks they know the next one. I thought so too. But no apparently because they wanted to or to entertain the reader isn’t the correct answer. The third official reason is to explain something. Then when she told us we’d be writing our own memoirs I didn’t have to think for more than five seconds what kind mine would be.
I’ve done a lot of Stupid things. Not stupid like trying drugs or alcohol, just stupid as in not smart. And I guess this is my explanation. My answer to the question why.
I’m going to ride this one. I thought, racing towards the wall of water that was forming. I’m going to go high, like a bird.
I let my fourth grade body float up the wave. Just as I neared the top, crash!
I was sent back down, down, down. Until my body was ground against the ocean floor.
Owwwww! I scream inside my head. That was stupid so stupid.
The wave blew me around. As if I a tumbleweed and it the wind. I was weight less, helpless. To struggle would have been a waste of energy.
Hey, wait I don’t think my body bends like that. Oh, okay maybe it does.
The wave, it dumped me on shore, and left me there with the shallow water going back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. I pulled myself up heavy and covered with sand I staggered over to our umbrella. Easily spotted by the sunny yellow ducks on the sky blue background.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, that was stupid.
“I spy a green ball with a hole in it,” I said. My brother Raphi, my cousin Natalie and my other cousin Geoff stared at the solstice tree, covered in unique ornaments all glittering in the tiny lights strung all around, hanging from branches of evergreen. They stared trying to find the green ball with a hole in it.
“I found it,” Raphi said getting up to point out the beautiful ball green with a red stripe through the middle and decorated with glitter. Sure enough there was a hole in it. Not like a opps I dropped it hole, it was there in the shape of a silver cone pointing in.
“Yes, that’s it,” I said.
“That was eeeeasy,” he said. “Next time at least try to make it hard.”
“Yeah,” Goeff added pouncing at the opportunity to insult me.
“You had better get it right next time,” a low voice boomed.
“What was that?” Natalie asked suspiciously.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably nothing.”
“You’re going to pay for this!” the low voice said.
“Maybe we should have a look around,” I said. We all got up and began to look. No one in the house but us, no one in the alley, no one out front, no one out back.
“What the heck is going on??” Geoff asks. I can hear in his voice that he is just as nervous as I am, if not more.
“Hey you guys, the stereos on!” Raphi shouts from another room as he turns it off.
Finally my parents come home from there walk. We tell them all about the voices and the stereo. My dad says that sometimes if the stereos been left on for a long time it goes to the T.V.
My heart sank, all that worry over a T.V. show. Stupid, stupid, that’s what I am, and let me tell you that is just the beginning.
3:00 am. My clock reads, and yet I’m up any way rudly awakened by my cat.
Oh, wait where is my cat?
“Yeow, hissssssss,” I hear. I reach my hand down towards what appears to be a scrawny fuzzy blob.
“Yeow, hissssss,” it yells. I’m wide awake now. As my eyes adjust to the light I can see the scrawny figure of my cat, not a fuzzy blob. It’s yelling at a much larger fuzzy blob which resembles another cat. My drowsy 3:00 am mind registers this, and begins to lob stuffed animals at the intruder blob.
So there I was, at 3:00 am lobbing stuffed animals at my neighbor’s cat, which ran out of the room.
I roll over in my bed. My mind empties. It’s clear now. Oh, that was dumb. But I think I’ve done some stupider things like the time…..
“Everyone on?” Whitney my neighbor, my friend calls out.
“All good!” I shout.
Holy krud were going to die
We started to move. Slowly at first the faster, faster.
“Weeeeeee!” Whitney my neighbor, Ella my other neighbor, Raphi my brother, Charlotte my sister, and me myself shout out.
Oh krud, this was stupid. What were we thinking? This is stupid were going to die! Maybe if I could just jump out now. No, can’t jump no room to move. I’m stuck. Stuck like an ant in peanut butter.
The long black sled picked up speed,
Faster, faster, here comes the jump. Wait the jump?!? Krud, Whitney why? Why you got a steer us over here?
“Ahhhhhhh!” we scream as the sled goes up. Thud! I’m on the ground. I pick myself up. Nothing hurts, nothing broken, no blood. I’m OK!
I look around to see the others, ok. “That was awesome!” we say as we head back up the hill to do it again. Stupid yes, I know. But isn’t that half of the fun?
“Every body ready?” I ask as I get ready to pull two of my best friends Raisah, and Eliana down the hill in an old rusty wagon I’ve had since I was three.
“All set,” Raisah says. I start forward, the wagon lurches as it follows behind me.
“Ok, umm were moving now,” Eliana says in to the camera Raisah is holding to document there ride.
“Were moving faster now,” Raisah says.
“And there’s a little girl,” Eliana explains.
“Say hi!” she adds as Raisah shows a flash of my little sister who looks at us like the idiots we are.
“Plums!” they shout as the wagon bumps and skids across the fallen plums.
“Thorns!” they shout, as I steer them clear of the dangling vines of doom. I can feel the wagon lurch and pull me back as it takes a step on to the grass.
“More thorns,” they shout, but this time I just drive right over them. They crunch under my mighty black wagon wheels.
“There goes Whiney’s house,” Raisah says as she shows a flash of Whitney’s green house.
“She’s our other friend,” Eliana adds as we zoom by and Raisah points the camera back at them.
“We’re going really fast now,” they commentate.
“Ahhhhhh!” they scream as we hit the bottom of the hill. A place where the hill literally gets steeper.
I try hard to stop the wagon. It hits the backs of my shins an inch away from the curb.
“Bekkah, are you trying to kill us?” Raisah accuses me
“No!” I tell her.
That could have been it, right there, they could have gone flying into the street. But they didn’t, they’re still here, not gone. We’ll probably pull the wagon up the hill and do it all over again. Because that is how we have fun. Stupid right?
And that’s a few of the stupid things I’ve done. My life is full of them and at some point I think I realized that doing stupid things has actually become an important part of my life. Stupid adventures in search of doughnuts or mysterious hidden staircases are what I have come to live for. Volunteering to teach little kids all by myself without any clue as to what I’m doing, I guess that’s just how I roll.
My point is that these stupid acts, they’re not pointless. They’re completely meaningful. And that is why when I walk to school I pretend to be a airplane when I go down the big hill.