I breathed in slowly, letting the negative energy flow out of me. It wasn’t working though, and I am not trained in Buddhism. So I decided to wing it, like much of everything else in my life. So what was one more screw up to add to the list? One more screw up didn’t mean anything to a professional screwball like myself.

“Andrew Micheal Lerean,” Miss Turst said as she motioned me onto the stage, “will be speaking tonight on the idea of natural conservation.”

‘Okay,’ I thought as I walked out on the stage in front of my applauding peers and their parents, ‘what the hell is that?’

“Andrew?” Miss Turst said, smiling and handing me the microphone. Only this smile said that if I didn’t do what she wanted then I would be dead meat, that I would receive a dozen detention on top of my usual thirteen.

“Natural Conservation,” I said, taking that microphone from her, “is not only about protecting and conserving penguins, but about protecting and conserving everything that is natural. I mean, we waste more stuff than we need. Natural stuff that we can’t readily get back, like trees and some types of gases, I mean do you know how long it takes a tree to grow? A really long time, and with all the deforestation that is happening it will take about forever to get all our trees back. People, it just ain’t gonna happen. Trees are important to us, because they filter out carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. We breathe oxygen so technically we are just breathing plant breath. I guess it’s kind of cool, all depends on how you look at it I suppose.” By now I could feel my face going red, and Miss Turst’s face was red to so I cut off my speech with, “Conserve plant breath” and walked off the stage. Never again do I plan to set foot on a stage again after that incident.