The Ticket Dilema

    "Come on, Daniel!" his sister Amy shouted "We're going to miss the bus!"
    "I dropped my lunch box!" he cried in exasperation. Finally, he found his lunch box behind a tall eighth grader and ran onto the bus.
    "You've got to be less clumsy." Amy told Daniel, sitting on the leathery bus seat.
    whatever... Do you know that it's his birthday today?"
    "Tomorrow!?", Amy asked. "But then we wont be able to get dad a great gift in time!"
    "Sure we can." Daniel answered. "How about a fishing trip?"
    "Nah, dad will get bored after half an hour and leave. We need to do something he likes." Amy stated.
    "How about we go to the movie theater?" Daniel asked. "Dad will love the new Indiana Jones Movie."
    "That's perfect!" Amy cried out. "Now all we need to do is get the movie tickets."
    As soon as Daniel and Amy got off the bus, they ran home, took of their book bags and quickly grabbed all of their money. Because they saw they had $60- just enough for four tickets, they got on their bikes and pedaled to the movie theater.
    "Indiana Jones...No!" Amy cried. "They're all out of tickets"
    "Now there's only one place to go." Daniel said, trying to sound triumphant.
    "Where?" Amy asked him.
    "To Biff Jenkins." Daniel answered.
    Amy shuddered- Biff Jenkins was a movie ticket collector, but he was quite creepy. And worst of all, you had to pay him a week of doing his chores for him: Biff was the laziest boy on Earth.
    "All right, but you have to do two thirds of the chores since it was your idea." Amy told him.
    "Fine." Dan answered. "Lets just get this over with."
   They quickly pedaled to Biff's house. The Halloween  decorations were still up, like always. They found Biff at the front door and asked him their offer.
    "Hey Biff, can you just give us any chores except for raking the leaves? I hate raking the leaves." Daniel asked Biff with a twinkle in his eye.
   Amy smiled. Daniel could be sly as a fox when he needed to. Raking the leaves was actually their favorite chore. The neighborhod kids were lucky that Biff was only about seven years old and very gullible.
    "Sorry, but this week, you'll have to rake the leaves." Biff answered. "No refunds."
    "Come on, Daniel." Amy  told him. "We have to go home now.", she told Biff, leading Daniel back to their bikes, a smile on her face.
    They quickly rode towards home, but they suddenly spotted a road block on their usual road.
    "Oh no..." Amy frightfully muttered. "We're going to have to go through Whirley street."
    Whirley street was known for being dark and scary, and for its bullies.
    "Come on, Amy." Daniel reassured her. "I have a plan."
  So, the only thing noticed on Whirley street was an extremely fat lady, who looked as if she had wheels under her skirt. This of course was Amy and Daniel, riding their bikes in Amy's nightgown, with Amy's head with a hat on it poking out the top. They slowly rode past Whirley street, and managed to get to their house after dark.
    "We made it!" they both yelled, as they could see their house in the distance.
    They ran into the house, just as their mom was bringing out the birthday cake.
    "Wait!" Amy yelled. "We have a last- minute birthday gift!"
    Daniel quickly took out the tickets and handed them to his dad.
   "But I though that there were no ore tickets. How much trouble did you have to go through to get these?" he asked. "Anyway, this is incredible!"
    And Daniel and Amy just looked at each other, their eyes twinkling like stars.

Quote Explanatory

   Many people stress the importance of resillience: "Fall seven times, stand up eight." (Japanese proverb) If everyone gave up on doing something if they didn't do well the first time, the world would be full of losers, people who have never accomplished anything. The only reason the world is full of people with great accomplishments is because they learned from their mistakes and moved on: our world depends on resilience.
     Even after surviving terrible hardships, people still managed to emerge victorious. George Washington and his troops had to survive many hardships the winter before the Delaware river crossing: t they had to find ways to keep warm, they had to ration food down to the smallest portions, and many of the men died from the bitter cold. Although they ould have given up and gone back the way they came, towards food and shelter, the soldiers did not surrender: they kept on tolerating the cold, until the opportunity to cross the Delaware river arose. The soldiers immediately took it, and they soon saw the better side of staying in the cold camp and waiting for so lond: they were avle to launch a successfull surprise attack upon the British.
    When I started my table tennis lessons, I was horrible: I couldn't even bounce the ball on the paddle five times! But even though I was completely terrible at table tennis, I kept practicing, and I started getting better and better. Every time I dropped the ball, I would just pick it up and start again. Eventually, I could rally (hit the ball back and forth on the table) with an older player about fourty times if I tried really hard. From this expirience, I learned that trying hard and getting back on your feet to try again is the only way to learn or get good at something.
    Resilience is the only thing that keeps human beings in a constant path of progress: if we didn't keep trying after we fail, nobody would be able to accomplish or learn anything. Truly, standing up after falling in many ways is the key to progress and learning.

Should Students Be Issued School Laptops?

     Many schools issue their children special "school laptops". However, this is not the case at Herbert Hoover Middle School. Giving out laptops to children would have many advantages: children could do their homework on the go, parents wouldn't have to buy their child a computer, and it would be possible to buy costly computer programs with less hassle.
    Many middle schoolers go on vacations with their family in fall, winter, and spring break.But even though traveling is exiting, it does not give children many opportunities to do over-the-weekend homework. Many families have desktop computers, which have a longer guarantee but are not very portable. If the child had a laptop, they could bring it with them on vacation and finish any typed/group work. The opposition's standing point may be that children may have problems with wireless servers in a hotel room, but most hotels actually offer free wireless internet.
     Computers can be costly: A good computer and monitor can cost about $        . If students are given laptops, their parents will not have to worry about buying a computer for their child. In fact, some poor families might benefit from getting a laptop more than they ever imagined. Some people might state that most families have 2 computers already, but those families have two computers because the parent's jobs require them to be using computers. If both parents are using the two computers, the child will not geta chance to finish his or her homwork.
     Nowadays, computer programs are easier to buy, but they still are pretty expensive: the disk for the Microsoft Word program costs just about $300! An average school has just about that number of sixth graders, so if everyone chips in, each child's family will only have to pay about a dollar to buy the disk for the school, so the software could be downloaded to every computer. Better yet, with the help of the seventh and Eight graders, the school could buy software that is even more expensive. People might say that downloading the software minto each computer would take a long time, but if all grades paid about five dollars each, the school would be able to but about five or six copies of the program, making the downloading go faster.
     Issuing Herbert Hoover Middle School students laptops would have many benefits. It would help students do homework while on vacation, and it would save families a lot of money on computers and computer programs. Issuing Herbert Hoover Middle School Students Laptops is the right choice!