Smart Kids Sometimes Do Stupid Things(Evangeline) I bet you think kids won’t do really stupid things. Especially kids like me that seem to be pretty smart. I am only six years old. We don’t have kindergarten here, but I could still read when I started to school. The first day of school, the teacher had our class try to read from a plain book with just one letter on a page. Each page had pictures of things starting with the letter. Any dummy could figure that out. The teacher put me in the fastest reader group. I’m not a stupid kid.

I am the big sister and I am supposed to make sure my little sisters don’t do stupid things. I know how to keep them out of trouble most of the time and I know what they should and should not be doing.

Sometimes smart kids do stupid things because we’re just too curious. Sometimes we are just kids and don’t think things through.

The first really stupid thing I did, at least that I can remember, was stick a nail file in the plug-in outlet on the stovetop. I don’t know why I would do that. It seems stupid now. The electricity bit me hard and made me feel like I was going to throw up.

We don’t have a TV yet. My Mom says TV’s suck your brains out and make you lazy. My Grandma lives next door and she has a TV. I worry sometimes about my brains getting sucked out, but I still watch it. I don’t worry so much about getting lazy. I got to watch a show called “Mary Poppins” on the TV. I liked it a lot! I went home, got my Mom’s big, black umbrella, climbed to the barn loft, opened the umbrella and jumped! I didn’t float around like Mary Poppins, but the umbrella did seem to slow me down so I wouldn’t hit the ground too hard. It hurt a little, but it was still fun. I changed into long pants and a long shirt so I wouldn’t get scratched up so bad. I jumped over and over. My Dad came home and caught me just as I was jumping for the gzillionth time without really getting hurt, and he said “Are you stupid? You’re going to kill yourself?” I am not SO stupid because I knew better than to tell him I had already jumped a gzillion times without getting hurt too much!

A few days later, I was riding my bike on the dirt road through the pasture to my Grandma’s. I hit a ditch and lost control of the bike. It ran into the electric fence. I went to get the bike and it hurt just like I had when I stuck the nail file in the socket. I wonder why would my Dad put all this wire up where anybody could touch it on an accident and get sick in their stomach? I had to leave my bike and I went to my Grandma’s. Later, I overheard my Dad tell my Grandma I wouldn’t have gotten hurt if I would have grabbed the plastic handlebars. I went back to where the bike was and pulled on the plastic handlebar. It didn’t hurt. I think I will have to try putting a plastic fork in the socket at home and see if it hurts.

Just a few days later, on this same dirt road, my Dad, my big brother and me were riding from the back part of the 40 acres we lived on over to our house. I don’t really understand a lot about what acres means, but I know it is a lot of space. Anyway, my Dad is going really, really slow. My brother and I are sitting in the back of the jeep facing backwards. You can see the ground really well. It is hardly moving. We are going so slow I am sure I can make it home faster if I walk so I jump. All the skin on my knees comes off when I hit the gravel. My hands get skinned up pretty bad, too. My Dad grabs me and puts me in the jeep. Later, I have to sit really still for a long, long time while my Mom uses tweezers to pull gravel out of my knees. It takes weeks for my knees to heel. My Dad tells my Mom he was going 25. I don’t know what that means for sure, but I know it means if you are looking down at the ground it doesn’t seem like you are going very fast, but you are really going pretty fast and are for sure going too fast to jump.

I am fixing to be 7. I am very glad. Before you are 7, even if you are really smart, you can do stupid things. I am sure when I get to 7, I won’t do anything else stupid.


Evangeline Carlisle, A somewhat smart kid.

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