How I Solved the World’s Problems on a Friday Afternoon in July
By Ethel Barton
Summer in the city can be so boring when there’s nothing to do and everyone is away except for the one person you do NOT want to play with. My mother likes to make suggestions when I say, “It’s so boring. There’s nothing to do.”
“Why don’t you play with Ted?”
“He’s so boring. He just sits and asks ‘What do you want to do?’ We can never think of anything so we just sit there hour after hour repeating the same stupid question over and over again: ‘What do you want to do?’”
“Why don’t you pack a lunch and we’ll go to the park?”
“I hate that. It’s so boring.”
“You used to like it?”
"Yeh, well that was then.”
“Look Buster, what are you going to do anyway? Sit here all summer and complain? We’re going to Grandma’s at five o’clock. In the meantime, use your imagination, think of something, join the French Foreign Legion, solve the world’s problems, or would that be too boring too?”
“I’ll choose the latter,” I said.
So there I was, stuck with solving the world’s problems. It was already noon on Friday. I had half a day to do it.
Hunger, I believe, is the most pressing problem in the world. I decided to serve all the hungry people a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of apple juice. In all the times of giving my friends snacks, this combination has received the least amount of complaints from the fussy eaters.
I went to the local supermarket to buy bread and cheese and apple juice. My shopping cart overflowed and the checkout lady asked if I needed help carrying it out to my car. That was a problem. I don’t drive yet and having so much to carry, I had to hire a fleet of trucks just to carry the bread. It caused a giant traffic jam in the city and when I checked my watch, I’d already used up too much time trying to solve the hunger problem. I told the hungry people they would have to wait while I went on to something else.
Shelter is a constant problem, I’ve been told by my teacher, Mr. Helton. I decided to make everyone a grass hut. I searched the prairies, the pampas and the steppes and even a savanna or two to find the perfect grasses. Some had to withstand the cold, and others, the heat. It took me a full hour.
At three o’clock, I decided to solve the problem of world peace. I had all the armies throw down their weapons and I organized a game of touch football.
By three-o-five, there was an argument over the rules of the game. I didn’t know there were so many different ways to play football. Some of the players didn’t think we’d chosen sides fairly and the referee couldn’t make everyone understand her calls because they all spoke different languages.
I put the problems of world peace on hold and went back to solving the hunger problem. By this time a large group had gathered waiting for my sandwiches. No matter how many I made, there weren’t enough. I slapped the cheese onto the bread and then cooked and flipped them. Some of them got scorched and when I looked up, the line just got longer and longer, extending half way around the world.
My solution to the shelter problem wasn’t working out well either. The fact that the huts were all the same was confusing. They couldn’t tell one hut from another. I suggested placing a flag in front of each, but then there was a dispute over which flag to fly?
I gave up. I went home. Tomorrow I will play with Ted. We will have a grilled cheese sandwich and apple juice for lunch. We will play two-man football and sleep in the tent in the backyard.