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Smart Kids Do Stupid Things Essay

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I will be the first to testify and, despite my obvious bias, I still believe that I am completely accurate when I say that my parents are the best that any kid has or will ever have. My mother, though, regardless of her efforts, repeatedly made a fatal error my upbringing; she never learned that, despite her trust in me, any adolescent boy left idle and unsupervised for any length of time will eventually turn to no good. Such was the case on a particular August afternoon.

August, for any grade-schooler, is without a doubt the most despicable of months. Even
May, when pre-adolescents are being driven mad by the promise of summer lying so close but unattainable before them cannot compare to the sultry anticlimax of August. Indignant …show more content…

We were sitting around doing absolutely nothing when I suddenly touched upon an idea which I considered to be divinely inspired; we would commandeer a water weapon, the greatness of which neither of our meager minds could ever hope to comprehend; a device so powerful it could launch spheres of dihydrogen monoxide distances that would spin your head. We were going to break out the water-balloon slingshot!

Our experiments with this strangely mysterious implement of destruction were at first occupied by shooting water-balloons over the house. Like a skillful mortar crew, we first scouted out a suitable target. Then, after careful calculations and tedious positioning, we proceeded to send a projectile lofting over the roof toward the street, where it would subsequently crash down onto the roof of my neighbor’s Pontiac Bonneville, the hollow, metallic thud letting us know we had hit our mark. However, after about twenty minutes of this, when we had perfected the technique to our satisfaction, we struck upon another brilliant idea. You see, my backyard culminates in a massive hill that was formed when Interstate 255 was built. The highway service road, Kinswood Lane, sits directly atop the hill, and just over its crest is the highway.

Standing on the top of the hill, gazing over the traffic whizzing by on the interstate, Mike and I were both struck with the same thought. We filled a balloon half with water, half with air, the optimal mixture for detonation on

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