The Big Mistake Club, Part 6: The Worst Good Idea

The Big Mistake Club, Part 6: The Worst Good Idea

The Story Begins

The classroom looked as if a drawing, gluing, and cutting contest had just ended all at once. Colourful paper lay on the desks, open boxes of markers stood by the window, and two pieces of chalk had rolled beneath the board. On the floor were strips of cut paper, bits of glue, and one lonely eraser.

Mrs Benková folded her arms and smiled.

“We still have ten minutes,” she said calmly. “When everything is back in its place, you may go home.”

Adam’s eyes lit up at once. He always had that look when a plan popped into his head before he had checked whether it was a good one.

“Ten minutes?” he cried. “Great! I know how we can do it in five.”

Ela looked at the pile of paper by his shoes.

“Your five minutes sometimes mean fifteen minutes of tidying up,” she said.

“Only because people don’t know how to use shortcuts,” Adam explained importantly. “You carry more things at once, walk on tiptoe so nothing bangs, and don’t talk too much.”

Samo picked up a small empty box.

“Can you fold a shortcut?” he asked. “So it fits in here?”

Adam blinked for a moment. Then he nodded, as if he had been waiting for exactly that question.

“You can. I mean… figuratively. Come on!”

At once, he picked up a book, a pack of markers, and a paper mat. He tucked the book under his arm, balanced the markers on top, and held the mat in his other hand.

“See?” he said. “One trip, three things.”

Just then, the paper mat slipped. The markers rolled between the desks, and the book opened exactly at a page with a big paper butterfly glued to it.

“One trip,” said Ela, “and seven new stops.”

Adam bent down for the markers. “That was only a starting problem.”

Meanwhile, Samo watched him very closely. Then he decided that if something had to be done quickly, it should be done properly. He piled three light boxes into his arms, set a basket of glue on one of them, and held a chair with his other hand because he wanted to carry it to the wall.

“Samo,” said Ela, “the chair isn’t supposed to be part of the boxes.”

“But Adam said to carry more things at once,” Samo replied. “A chair is a thing. A very big thing.”

The boy took one careful step on tiptoe. Then another. On the third, the top box tipped, the basket overturned, and two bottles of glue rolled onto the carpet with soft thumps.

Samo stopped completely still.

“The shortcut is great,” he announced. “It just falls down a bit.”

Adam let out a giggle. Ela smiled with only one corner of her mouth. Even Mrs Benková had to turn towards the window so it would not be too obvious that she was laughing.

Then she helped Samo put the things down.

“Sometimes the fastest way is to carry less,” she said. “Especially when you don’t have to pick it all up twice.”

“We have a trolley,” Samo remembered, pointing to the small cleaning trolley by the lockers.

Adam straightened up. “Exactly! That’s it. A trolley is a shortcut with wheels.”

Soon, all three of them were loading it. Adam tossed papers onto the bottom, Samo added boxes, and Ela tried to place the cloths to one side so nothing would make them dirty.

“We don’t need to sort it now,” Adam declared. “First we’ll wheel it away, then we’ll put everything away. That way, we won’t keep going back and forth.”

When Things Start to Change

“And where will we put it away?” Ela asked.

“Well… away,” Adam answered.

That sounded like a precise enough plan to him. Before long, the trolley was full of paper, chalk, scissors, boxes, cloths, and a wastepaper bin leaning on top like a small tower.

Samo placed the last pack of coloured paper on the pile.

“Will my snack fit in there too?” he asked.

“Not the snack,” said Ela. “That trolley already looks as if it needs its own report card.”

Adam took hold of the handle, and Samo supported the trolley from the side. It moved. First slowly, then a little crookedly. One wheel began to squeak: eeek-eeek, eeek-eeek.

“That wheel is protesting,” said Samo.

“It can’t protest,” Adam argued. “It’s a wheel.”

“Then it squeaks very convincingly.”

At the door, the trolley suddenly stopped. It was not broken. One box had simply pressed against the cupboard, and the bin on top slid into Adam’s arms.

Luckily, nothing spilled. But Mrs Benková was already standing beside them.

“I see that nobody argued,” she said. “That’s good. But perhaps you’re all hurrying faster than you can think.”

Adam nodded, but only a little.

“One more shortcut and it’ll be done,” he whispered to his friends.

By the lockers came Adam’s so-called quick putting-away. Clean cloths ended up with used paper. Chalk went between the books. Colourful scraps went into the rubbish box, and the scissors settled beside eraser shavings.

Samo opened one box, looked inside, and frowned seriously.

“Are we playing hide-and-seek with the objects?” he asked. “Because the scissors are hiding very well among the rubbish.”

Ela said nothing. She only lifted a clean cloth with a small yellow piece of paper lying on it. Then she pointed to another box of books, where three pieces of chalk were squeezed between the exercise books.

“We’ve made a mixed salad,” she said.

Adam looked around the classroom. The trolley was emptier, but the room did not look tidier at all. Quite the opposite. Things were spread across more places, and it was now harder to tell where they belonged.

“Maybe,” he admitted quietly, “we got back to the beginning.”

“Not quite,” said Ela. “At the beginning, we had fewer boxes.”

Mrs Benková nodded towards the table.

“Shall we try a little order before the big order? Let’s make piles. Paper here, supplies here, clean things here, things to wash here, and little things separately.”

This time Adam did not protest. He and Samo began taking things out of the boxes. Ela made sure no chalk or glue wandered into the pile of books.

Meanwhile, Samo turned an empty box over and stared at it for a long time.

“When boxes are empty, they don’t know what they should receive,” he said.

“That’s true,” the teacher agreed.

“What if they had colours? Or pictures? A blue book for books. Yellow scissors for art supplies. A green cloth for clean cloths. And a red drop for things that need washing.”

Ela looked at him through her purple glasses.

“That’s not a bad shortcut,” she said.

“It isn’t even a shortcut,” Mrs Benková added. “It’s a very good system.”

Samo smiled so widely that his curls shook above his forehead.

Soon, they found coloured stickers. Samo drew a book on the blue box. Ela carefully drew scissors and a paintbrush on the yellow one. Adam stuck a green sticker on the box for clean cloths and a red one on the box for things to wash.

An Important Moment

“Red is ready,” he announced. “But nothing will be thrown in all at once. I promise.”

“That’s nice progress,” said Ela.

Now the work went strangely quickly. Not the kind of quickly that makes things fall, squeak, or secretly hide in the rubbish. Everyone knew what they held and where it belonged. Adam carried one or two things at a time, Samo pointed to the pictures on the boxes, and Ela sometimes found a little thing the others had forgotten.

In the end, only one lonely eraser was left on the floor.

“Where does that go?” Samo asked.

Adam thought for a moment. “With the little things.”

“Correct,” said Ela. “Today, you’re becoming someone who understands order.”

When the bell rang, the classroom was clean. The trolley stood empty by the wall and no longer squeaked. The colourful boxes were lined up beneath the window like a small rainbow that knew exactly what it was doing.

Mrs Benková looked around.

“Thank you,” she said. “The fastest way is often the one you don’t need to fix.”

Adam nodded. “My brilliant idea was probably the worst good idea of the day.”

“That was clear from the trolley’s first wheel,” Ela remarked.

Samo took the club notebook from his backpack. In large letters on the cover were the words: The Big Mistake Club.

“Do we have a new rule?” he asked.

Adam picked up the pencil, but handed it to Samo.

“You came up with this one.”

Samo slowly wrote: “Think through the shortcut first, then try it.” Beneath the sentence, Ela drew a tiny wheel that looked very tired.

All three looked at it and laughed. Then they closed the notebook, tucked it into the backpack, and left the classroom past the colourful boxes, which now knew exactly where they belonged.