The Big Mistake Club, Part 10: The Talent Show Disaster

The Big Mistake Club, Part 10: The Talent Show Disaster

The Story Begins

On Friday, after the big break, Ms Benková’s classroom looked a little like a tiny theatre. By the board stood a microphone on a low stand. Next to it waited a chair with a blue cover, a box of safe props, a colourful ribbon, and a paper hat with a star on it.

“Today we have a rehearsal,” Ms Benková announced. “On Monday, there will be the school talent show. We’ll practise the acts exactly as they will appear in the programme.”

Everyone fell quiet at once. Well, almost everyone. Samo’s green backpack slipped from his shoulder and landed with such a thud that the paper hat on the table shook.

“Even the backpack wants to perform,” Ela said calmly.

Adam smiled. “That would be a great start! First the backpack, then—”

“No,” Ela cut in. “First the programme.”

A list lay on the table. Nina was first, singing. Matej was second with a dance number. Zuzka was third. She could cleverly hide coloured balls under three paper cups and then find them again in completely different places.

Nina was quietly practising her song by the microphone. Meanwhile, Matej was practising his steps to the beat and every now and then he turned so fast that one shoelace flipped over the other. Zuzka lined the paper cups up and checked that the balls were still in the box.

Adam watched it all with his hands in the pockets of his red hoodie. A familiar spark of an idea appeared in his eyes.

“We could help them a little,” he whispered. “Make it even better.”

“What exactly does Nina need?” Ela asked.

“Maybe a dramatic entrance,” Adam said. “And Matej could dance closer. And Zuzka… Zuzka could have the props right by her. Everything can be put together!”

Samo frowned. “Put together with glue?”

“Not with glue,” Adam said. “More like… together.”

“So should we put the chair in the box?” Samo asked.

Ela pushed up her round purple glasses. “That would explain why the box looks frightened.”

Meanwhile, Ms Benková was helping two children by the window stick paper stars onto cardboard. So the trio bent over the programme.

Adam read quickly. “Nina, Matej, Zuzka. See? One, two, three. That can be one big scene. Singing, dancing, a trick. Done.”

“But that’s the order,” Ela objected.

“Exactly! If they come one after another, they are together.”

Samo pointed to a word between the names. “And what does this little ‘then’ mean?”

“It means even more fun comes afterwards,” Adam declared.

That sounded so convincing that they got to work. Quietly, discreetly, and with good intentions.

First, Adam moved Nina’s chair to the space in front of the board. “When you sit down after your song, it will look grand,” he explained.

Nina looked at the chair. “But I don’t stand or sit during the song. I sing.”

“Of course. The chair will just… wait dramatically.”

Just then, Matej came over to practise his turning step. He stopped right in front of the chair.

“My circle is supposed to be here,” he said.

“Now it’s a circle with a chair,” Ela replied. “A very rare kind of circle.”

But Adam was already thinking ahead. He moved the microphone a little to one side so Matej would have more room. The microphone ended up beside the box of cups.

Samo saw that and decided everything had to be ready together. He added the blue ribbon, the paper hat, and the little bell Zuzka used at the end of her trick.

When Things Start to Change

“This way nothing will get lost,” he said happily.

“Now it’s lost in one box,” Ela remarked.

When Nina came back for her microphone, she found a cup, a hat, and a ribbon beside it. “Am I supposed to sing with all this?”

“No!” Adam blurted out. Then he hesitated. “I mean… maybe just the hat? No, not the hat. But the ribbon could— actually, no.”

Nina smiled, though a little uncertainly. “I only wanted to sing the song.”

Ela heard that. For a moment, she looked at Adam, but said nothing. Instead, she took the club notebook from her desk. It had blue covers, a small star stuck to one corner, and notes about past mistakes inside.

“We’ll write down the correct order,” she decided. “Simply. Nina, Matej, Zuzka.”

“And then a big finale?” Adam asked.

“Then we stop adding things that were not there,” Ela said.

Samo leaned over the notebook. “Can Matej’s dance fit in there too?”

“Only the plan for the dance,” she explained.

“Oh. So the feet stay outside. That’s practical.”

Ela wrote the three names one beneath the other. Adam quickly added arrows beside them. One arrow pointed to the microphone, the second to the chair, and the third to the box. Samo drew three little cups beside Zuzka’s name. Ela wanted to add where everyone should stand, but her arrow met Adam’s. Then Samo added his arrow with the hat.

Soon the page looked like a map of a city where all roads led into one box.

“That’s not a plan,” Ela said. “That’s pasta.”

“Great!” Adam said. “Pasta gets put together too.”

“Not everything that can be put together should be put together,” Ela replied.

Samo studied the drawings. “Wait. Nina is supposed to go to the microphone. Matej is supposed to go to the circle. Zuzka is supposed to go to the box. Why do our arrows say everyone should go everywhere?”

The trio stared at the notebook. Then they looked at the space in front of the board. The chair stood in the dance circle. The microphone waited by the box. The ribbon hung from the hat, and the hat sat on one of the cups.

“We have a small misunderstanding,” Adam said.

“We have a big misunderstanding,” Ela corrected him.

Just then, Ms Benková clapped her hands. “Children, let’s continue the rehearsal. Nina, you may begin.”

Nina stepped forward, but Matej, who had just spun around, was standing in her place by the microphone. Zuzka ran to the box, but saw Nina’s sheet music beside it. Samo tried to move everything back at once and picked up the ribbon, the hat, and the bell.

The bell rang.

Matej did a spin.

Nina began singing the first verse because the music was already playing.

Adam raised his hand. “Everyone move right now! I mean, Nina to the microphone, Matej to the circle, Zuzka to… no, the hat should go— the hat isn’t going anywhere!”

“The hat has no legs,” Samo pointed out.

Ela looked at the confused stage. “Welcome to the combined edition.”

For a moment, everything seemed to stop. Nina was holding her music and one cup. Matej stood by the chair with one foot in the air. Zuzka had the bell and the ribbon in her hand. Samo was hugging the box as if a fragile volcano lived inside it.

Ms Benková was already standing beside them. She did not look angry. Instead, she looked as if she had just discovered a very unusual kind of school performance.

An Important Moment

“I can see singing, dancing, a trick, and one chair trying to be important,” she said. “We have two choices. We can stop and start again. Or we can see whether this can become a shared finale.”

The children looked at one another.

Nina pulled the microphone closer. “I can keep singing.”

“I’ll dance around the chair, not through it,” Matej said, carefully stepping to one side.

Zuzka lifted the cups. “And when the song ends, I’ll show the balls.”

“And I’ll ring only at the end,” Samo added.

“That sounds almost like a plan,” Ela said.

The music continued. Nina sang and Matej danced in a wide, safe circle. When the chorus came, Zuzka spun the blue ribbon over the box and put the hat on the chair like a strange spectator. At last, Samo rang his bell. Zuzka lifted a cup, and a red ball rolled out from underneath it. Then came a second one. And a third appeared, as if by magic, in the paper hat.

The class burst into laughter and applause. Not because anyone had made a mistake. They laughed because the hat on the chair looked very much like the headteacher, and because Samo bowed so carefully while ringing the bell that the box stayed hanging from his elbow.

After the music, Nina let out a breath. “That was different from what I wanted. But I quite liked it.”

Matej nodded. “The best part was that I didn’t trip over the chair.”

“I nearly put a ball into the microphone,” Zuzka admitted. “Luckily, I noticed.”

Adam looked down at his trainers. “I wanted to help you. I just didn’t notice that each of you wanted something different.”

Ela closed the notebook, then opened it again to a clean page. “Next time, we’ll read the plan more slowly.”

“And there should be a picture next to the word ‘put together’,” Samo added. “Maybe two pictures. One for when things go beside each other, and another for when they do not need to go in the box.”

Ms Benková smiled. “That would be a useful system. And perhaps you’ll manage to invent it before your next idea, Adam.”

“Maybe,” Adam said. “But I can’t promise that completely, completely.”

In the club notebook, they wrote a new rule: “First listen, then put things together.” Samo drew three small arrows beneath the sentence. Ela quickly connected them with just one thin line.

Adam noticed. “Is that our new system?”

“For now, it’s a very careful beginning,” Ela said.

The hat, the ribbon, and one lonely cup were still on the table. Ms Benková put them back in the box. As she did, the hat tipped to one side, as if it wanted to bow one more time.