Mr. Connor is usually the first teacher to arrive at school each morning. Today is different. He forgot to manually charge his primitive iHelp Robot the night before. After waking up very late, Matthew throws some clothes on, unfreezes an instant breakfast, and jumps in his 2042 Ford Mustang. Although it is a slightly old car, all his 7th grade students love it. Since the highway is congested, and he is in a hurry, Mr. Connor decides to engage the energy consuming Fli-Wai hover system, which he hadn’t updated in over a year.


20 minutes later, he arrives at school only 10 minutes late. Mr. Connor
signs in with the patrol robot, which the school had recently purchased, and
heads for his classroom on floor 24. All his students in reading class greet him
and pull out their SuperKindle V64.5. Matthew tells them they won’t be
needing it this period. Instead, he decides to tell a story about his childhood. All the students happily agree. Mr. Connor starts.


About 36 years ago, when I was your age, something extraordinary
happened. I woke up one August morning to the sound of my dad cooking
pancakes. We quickly ate them, got dressed and grabbed our beach cruisers.
Dad took me on our usual route around Key West, which I didn’t care much
for. About 25 minutes after leaving the house we reached the beach near the
airport.

Suddenly, we spotted a “Key’s Pets”, Cessna Caravan, cargo plane with
dense smoke coming from its engine. All of a sudden, the door latch opened,
and hundreds of padded cages fell all around us. Just in time, we dropped our
bikes, hid under a car and looked at the plane crash into the ocean. We got out
of our hiding place and observed that the cages were full of puppies and kittens.
“It was raining cats and dogs!” interrupts Alicia. Everyone laughs. Mr. Connor
replies, “Yes! Precisely.” Mr. Connor resumes the narrative.
Most of the puppies and kittens didn’t survive, although the few lucky ones
were quickly stolen by swarms of tourists who also saw the whole thing. Dad and I grabbed a Siberian Husky pup that had landed in front of us. It was
slightly injured. We put it in the bike’s basket and rushed it to the animal hospital.


There, we told the vet what happened while she mended the puppy’s leg. She seemed greatly unconvinced; so, we told her to go to the airport vicinity and study the remaining dead animals. That night, we told my mom the horrible and amazing story that she didn’t believe even though the frightened, caged puppy lay on the sofa. We switched the TV set ON and watched the news. Luckily, the story was being transmitted on most news channels. We couldn’t sleep that night; so we just stared at the sleeping pup.


Mr. Connor says, “I want you all to think of an ending and transform the
story into a video using your Apple computers at home.” Everyone replies,
“We want to hear the ending!” Mr. Connor promises to tell the ending next
week, when the animations are due. After the students leave for the next period,
Matthew starts to cry, and nostalgically remembers his beautiful childhood. He
will treasure it forever in his heart.