It's Too Toasty Outside

Everybody keeps telling me temperatures are rising, but nobody knows what they’re talking about. Every adult I meet has an answer. Daddy, Mommy, and even Donalbain, my pet bearded dragon, seem to have all the answers. But they don’t. They can’t predict the future. Nobody can predict the future. Except for me. I may only be eight years old, but trust me I’m psychic.

Ever since I was four years old, I remember hearing about global warming. I didn’t get it. How did me throwing my biscuit wrapper in the wrong bin relate to the earth getting toasty? Nobody gave me a good explanation. Mommy just yells at me and Daddy never recycles. He told me that farts from cows are the reason for global warming. But if I were a cow, I would fart as much as I wanted because sometimes, it’s just fun. Like when I’m in my bed and everybody else is asleep. And I don’t think daddy should say anything because he drives a 2002 Ford F-150, and it smells like a skunk’s butt.

But like I said, I can predict the future pretty goodly. When mommy threw a vase at daddy, I predicted that they wouldn’t be living together for much longer. I was right. When my school teacher tripped and fell in class, I predicted that Ronnie would laugh and get in trouble. I was right. Ronnie was taken to the principal’s office. If you don’t believe me, you can ask anybody who knows me because they would tell you that I’m smart. They would tell you I am psychic.

When mommy first told me that I was causing greenhouse gasses, I told her she was wrong. She told me I better watch my mouth, and I told her that it is hard to watch my mouth if I don’t have a mirror in front of me. She took away my video game privileges and told me to go outside. So I went in the backyard and pretended to be a cow. I farted all over the place.

Eventually, mommy came outside and tried to apologize, but she is never really good with that sort of thing. I ignored her failed apology, and I told her why she was wrong. I told her that she is a large woman and I am a small boy, so when she breathes, she emits large amounts of CO2. I only emit small amounts. I also told her that I planted three saucer magnolia trees in my school yard, and I’ve never seen her plant anything. I also said she was silly because she always brags about her electric car, but she takes long cruises every few months. Cruises make me seasick. They also emit more CO2 than I ever will.

But the thing that really makes me mad lately, is that mommy and daddy keep talking about what will happen in the year 2050. I keep saying that they’ll both be dead by then, but I whisper that to myself so they don’t hear me. I don’t think warmer temperatures will make me dead in 2050. That’s what Jeremy talks about at school, and it makes me scared just thinking about it. I don’t like him. He’s always angry about something. In 2050, I think we’ll all be sweating too much. That’s my prediction. Nobody’s talking about it, but we’re all going to stink. Every one of us. We’ll walk outside, and it will be so toasty we will just start sweating. You’ll go try to have a play-date with a friend, but you’ll get tired too fast and will have to go inside. And then you will have to crank up the a/c, and that will just use more energy from burning something, which will lead to greenhouse gasses. It will get so toasty that you won’t want to bike or walk to school anymore. You’ll be so fed up with sweating all the time, you’ll hop back in your 2002 Ford F-150 and speed right down the road without a care in the world. That’s what will happen in 2050. And I don’t like it.

I still think it’s funny, though, because nobody explains anything. For the past year, I’ve been throwing away my banana peels in the blue recycle bin. But I just found out that our recycling company can only recycle paper. Banana peels are not paper.

​I also used to throw away whole chunks of broccoli in the blue bin. Chunks of broccoli are not like paper at all. But nobody cares to tell you these things when you’re a kid. People just scare me. That’s all they like to do. People like to yell, and they like to scare. When Aunt Tricia died in the Fall, mommy told me that I would end up like her if I didn’t eat my chunks of broccoli. But if I’m going to tell truth, I’ve never seen grandma eat a chunk of broccoli in her whole life and she seems to be doing just fine. Jeremy told me during reading class that I was a stupid person because I sometimes stutter when I talk. You should not say something if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I may be a very smart eight-year-old, but I do not know everything. I went to feed Donalbain last night. Donalbain is lucky because he will be dead by 2050. Before I fed him his crickets, I looked at him. He was smiling. It was nice. I rarely smile. I don’t like that. I am good to Donalbain, but he lives a really sad life. He has no friends, and he has no family. The crickets are the only people he can talk to, but he has to eat them. He can’t go for long walks, and his only toy is a dirty rock.  I give him water, but I sometimes even forget to give him that. And even with all that, he looks at me and smiles.

Donalbain is not like Jeremy. Jeremy is always insulting people. Probably because his parents are always insulting him. But with a haircut like that, he sometimes deserves it.

Donalbain is not like daddy. He doesn’t blame cows for his own responsibilities.

Donalbain is not like mommy. He doesn’t yell at me without knowing what he’s talking about.

Donalbain is not like me. He smiles.
 

I don’t want to confuse anybody because I don’t like being confused. A smile will not cause 2050 to be a less sweaty year. There may be nothing we can do to stop 2050 from being the sweatiest year of all time. But if people stop yelling at each other, I think it won’t be so bad. I think we should leave the cows alone and let them fart away while we eat salads. I think we should stop fake apologizes and start understanding the blue bins. We should be like Donalbain who never tells a lie. And he never has a frown.

​I realize now that I really liked when I said I was psychic. Sadly, that was a lie.