On the last day of school in 5th grade, I had made plans to go over my friend’s house after school. He lived right behind the school; his backyard was practically the school’s field. At the time, we were in elementary school. Our elementary school ranges from kindergarten to 5th grade, and since we were in 5th grade, we were graduating and moving on to middle school. Anyways, the day went on like any normal day, and afterward, we went back to his house as planned. We hung around for about an hour, playing basketball and video games just like any other 5th grader. However, our fun was interrupted by his mom coming downstairs to tell us something. She told us that we had to go back to our school and give our teachers gifts since my friend forgot to bring them to school. Anyways, we went back to school, and we found an unlocked door. The building was empty besides for a janitor sitting in his truck in the parking lot. All of the teachers and staff were at a staff party. We didn’t think anything of it, so we just went on our way and dropped off each gift on the teachers’ desks. In fifth grade, we had 3 teachers: math, science, and social studies, and each teacher had their own class of students. In an attempt to prepare us for middle school, we would switch classes for the three different subjects.

We proceeded to drop off the gift for our social studies teacher, then math teacher, and lastly science. Our science classroom is very similar to the ones we have in high school. They had lab tables, sinks, places to set up Bunsen burners, all of the normal things that one would expect from a high school chemistry class. The reason why a class of fifth graders needed all of that is something that I still don’t know, we didn’t use any of it anyways. However, on the first day of school, when we were taking a tour of the classroom, she showed us the chemical eyewash and shower. She didn’t have many rules in her class, but one of them was to never pull down the lever. It hadn’t been used in over 20 years, so nobody even knew if it still worked. Anyways, we dropped off the gift on the teacher’s desk, and just as we were about to leave, we both stopped and looked at the triangular shaped handle. We then looked back at each other, and we knew what we had to do. We slowly approached the shower, and we both placed a hand on it. At the time, I had a broken thumb so I had a hard cast on my hand that could not get wet. Anyways, we took a deep breath and counted down from 3. Once we reached one, we both pulled down and an orange liquid shot out from the old shower head. Thinking back on it, the water was probably orange from all of the rust and bacteria that had accumulated over many years of neglect. Water spewed out and we both jumped back out of fear. We ran out of the classroom, found the closest door, and ran home. We didn’t know what else to do. Once we got back to his house, we immediately went downstairs and turned on a movie. An hour or so later his mom came down to check on us and ask us how giving the gifts went. We knew that we couldn’t get away with pulling the shower, especially since my cast was soaking wet. Also, my friend’s mom was super nice so we were not nervous telling her. Like we thought, she was not mad. After 15 minutes, she brought up a really good point. She asked if the water was still on. At that moment, my friend and I turned and looked at each other. We were thinking the exact same thing. We bolted up the stairs, out the door, and back to the school. We entered through the same door as before and ran through the school. Everything seemed normal, then we turned the corner for the wing that had our classes in it. We were greeted with ankle high water covered the entire hallway. We ran through the water, and into our science classroom. Sure enough, the water had been on this entire time. The entire wing was flooded, along with all of the classrooms. Once we got to the source of the water, we realized that we had no idea how to turn it off. That is until my friend had a smart idea. He reached his hand over and pushed the handle back up. Needless to say, we were some pretty smart 5th graders. We successfully stopped the water, but now we had to somehow deal with the new swimming pool we had just created in our elementary school. We ran around the school looking for a staff member to tell, but since they were all at the party nobody was there. We ran outside to the janitor who was sitting in his truck, and he rolled down his window. We started talking, but he was making kind of a weird face and wasn’t responding. He didn’t speak much English if any at all. I thought of the best excuse that my 5th-grade mind could think of, and tried to act it out in order for him to understand. I said that we slammed the door shut and we slammed it so hard that it set off the shower. Truly brilliant. After 5 minutes, it was apparent that we were not reaching the janitor. We just decided to head home. When I got picked up, his mom told mine, and to my surprise she was not mad. We emailed the school principal to confess and explain what happened. Luckily, our principle happened to be our 2nd-grade teacher who loved us, so needless to say she was very lenient. Also, we were good kids. This was the first time in our elementary school careers that we could have gotten punished for something bad we did. Our principal knew this too, so we didn’t get in trouble at all. We didn’t get anything on our records, all we had to do was come in at the end of the summer to help our teachers set up for the incoming students. Not bad at all. Needless to say, it was a very awkward conversation with our science teacher, as we had broken one of her few important rules.