One dollar and Thirty Cents
So, I did something dumb when I was seven, and from that day on I was cursed. The bane that I carried was re-living this one horrible moment from my past. Before I jump back in time to that, my name is Kermit, not to mistake it for the frog. The thing is I am not alone in this whole relive your past thing every day for the rest of your life, because my best friend Ed is in this as well. Once on a sunny day in Ms. Witherspoon’s class, we were playing with a chemistry set. While we were messing around, we got our hands on a wood burning set. I do not know why the teacher had this, but she did. We accidentally set a book on fire. I started running for my life because I did not know what to do; I played with Pokémon cards during fire drills. Ed was just standing and screaming, a flame was a hair away from him, so I went back and grabbed him by his favourite ninja turtles shirt and threw him out the way. As the fire started eating away at Ms. Witherspoon’s desk, we ran out the class. I could smell the sweet and sugary gummy worms melting in a glass jar on the top bookshelf where the kids could not reach.
Ms. Witherspoon walked out of the bathroom, saw the fire, and yelled at us saying; “This is why we can’t have nice things!” I did the thing I always wanted to do, to pull the fire alarm. We booked it out of the half burning Park Street Elementary school. Ed and I were smiling from ear to ear as the biggest fire trucks pulled in. We heard the deafening popcorn like noises from the school; I figured it might have been the basketballs in the gym. The fire was roaring into lunch time while the kids sheltered themselves from the smoke and debris. After the fire was put out the portal opened behind us; that takes out of this memory and brings us back into the present. We walked through it and ended up sitting in the chairs in my kitchen. This is how our mornings have started, and it has been this way for the last ten years. We are seventeen now.
Let me tell you a bit more about Ed and me. We have been friends since the fire. He lives in a Oger shack looking lodge house right next to my shiny modern craftsmen house, but that’s just me since his room needs to be picked up. We also dress the same, hoodie with basketball shorts and a pair of sunglasses. Ed is six foot two and I am six foot three, but he is more athletic than me. I like to make money and create stuff; I have already been successful with my entrepreneurship because I designed this walking stick that has glow in the dark handles and foot. Twelve of them got sold and then it went all downhill and I gave up.
This morning Ed and I had to produce a plan to stop this whole curse thing. I had a feeling that with my brains and his strength we could do this. He said that we could try to stop the fire. I said that is crazy because if we change the past, it will change the future. This means we need to do something now, but I do not know what. I threw a dollar and thirty cents on the table, and I asked him what we could do with this? Ed started to laugh. I continued to say that we could rebuild the school, but we do not have that type of money, so we kept brainstorming and going back to the drawing board. Ed said something, but it was something about him being hungry. 11:32 AM came and I figured it out: we take my dollar and thirty cents and buy a plank of wood and we build something like a prototype and see if we can sell it to a company and get money that way. It was a long shot, but it was our only lead. After we got the plank, we said that we needed to make something that is a need and not a want so people will accept it. We also raided Eds grandpas shed and went to look for people who put stuff on their driveways for free so we can take materials off those. My dad thankfully had some power tools and we started to work.
It took a whole month and a half. We finally got the paint and sticker job done, so we stood back and looked at our masterpiece. We built a wheelchair. It took so long because we still had school and homework, but I worked on it a bit on Wednesday nights and Fridays. The entire rest of the month we sat next to the phone and waited for any buyers. Sunday came and we were ready to give up, but then the phone rang. We just stared and walked slowly to it, and I picked it up, it was about the prototype, but they asked us to take it to shark tank. I asked if we could do it over an online meeting because my parents wouldn’t buy Ed and me plane tickets. They said yes, so the day after, the business talking has started, he started by saying the price he would pay for the design/wheelchair I made, which was seventy-five thousand dollars. I knew what I was doing because I have been taking an accounting course. I replied and said, ‘Nah make it one hundred thousand dollars. Do you think I am going to take seventy-five grand? those are rookie numbers. We continued to negotiate until we decided on ninety-three thousand dollars. The next day a cheque came through the mail and Ed started to say, I wonder how many gumballs we can buy with that. I flicked him in the head and reminded him what we were supposed to do.
Back to the hardware store we go, but this time we get more than a plank of wood, we have a school to build. My dad came with us because we did not know what we were doing. Once my dad helped me and Ed get our supplies, we still had some money left so Ed suggested to hire some people to help build. We did not have enough money to hire a proper team so we just asked our classmates if they could help. Lucky for us they said they would do it without pay. Summer started and we walked to the site with wagons filled with supplies. The foundation was a bit broken, so we had to fix that which put us behind schedule. We had to clear the area from all the trash and overgrown black berry bushes that made the land look like a post-apocalyptic scene from a video game. After we finished that, the structure building started. The entire exterior took shape, we had to put on the roof which was the most tedious part because it started raining. Everybody was scrambling like ants looking for food!
The interior was the easy part because we were able to re-design it with our own tastes. I still think we added more video game posters than desks. We placed the last table where Ed and I started the fire and at that exact moment, the portal to our past opened. My watch said it was 10:14 AM, what if rebuilding the school did not work. We entered the portal, but to our surprise we met Ms. Witherspoon who was hobbling up from her wheelchair reaching out for her cane. This cane was no ordinary cane-it was the one I made! She looked the same as she had since first grade, long brown hair with glasses that look like you can burn paper with. Ed just had to blurt out, ‘what’s up Ms. Witherspoon.’ She replied saying ‘the sky… got em.’ Ed took a step back, and then Ms. Witherspoon said calmly to us, “‘You have done the right thing. Have you both learned your lesson today?” That made me mad because she was the one who said we could play with the chemistry set, but she could have also done something to stop us from starting a fire.
She said, “Yes I wasn’t thinking, and I should have been supervising. This would have also never happened if you two listened to the lesson.” We understood what she was trying to tell us, so we ALL said we were sorry and that what happened was bad. Ms. Witherspoon forgave us, and the portal opened behind us, Ms. Witherspoon came with us. Ed and I walked through first and watched Ms. Witherspoon walk through but she was in a broken wheelchair. She looked older than when we were in the portal. She then said quietly “Kermit, how about you use your chemistry knowledge from first grade and make a new wheelchair that is powered by a chemical reaction.” I did have like an extra twenty-three grand, and I do not have any other way to spend it that could get me more money with it, so I did what Ms. Witherspoon say. These were the last words Ms. Witherspoon told me until she wheeled across the road. I asked Ed if he wanted to help me with my new business career and he said yes because he also wanted some bubble gum.
This time I went to three stores, the hardware store, the local science shop and a chemical storage warehouse. At the science shop I saw the same chemistry set that Ed and I played with in the first grade. I decided to buy it and use it and some other things that I bought to make some new type of energy that does not blow up. I had to watch some YouTube videos to see which chemicals not to mix. After that Ed came back from the shed with the prototype of the Witherspoon Wheeler 100. The type of energy that I made; I had no idea on what I did but YouTube said it was safe. It also made the battery life better by five hundred percent. I took it out on a test drive. We used a speedometer, and it was clocking over 50 Km at max speed. With the extra money we had, we bought metal parts, proper wheels and we bought a small warehouse to make more in. If we wanted to make more, we would need more money and that is where my family started investing in our product and helped Ed and me build more wheelchairs.
The Witherspoon Wheeler 100 had to be affordable but can still make us a lot of money. We settled for a price of 1200 dollars or 1000 dollars. September 22, we sold our first wheelchair to this elderly lady named Ms. Witherspoon. Ed and I are now 27 and our company have become so popular that it is a product around the world. We have made over 4.3 million dollars this year, but we used most of it on schools and educational programs. The latest model wheelchair we have made was rocket powered and can act like a hover board, I use one for myself because I was so proud with it, so I used it instead of a car, it is called the Space cruiser 7200.
It was 10 years since Ms. Witherspoon passed away, and I framed my 1st grade report card that she gave me on the main entrance wall in our wheelchair dealership. I got a C for math, A for science, and C+ for P.E. As you can see, my failed experiment in grade 1 helped me get an A in science. All part from the experiment I did in science class that lead to what could still be my fate. Now I am thankful that I get to live my mornings not going back into the past.