“Mom,” yelled eight-year-old Emily. “I fell down!”
“Where from?”
“I was seeing if I could stand on top of the swing set and touch that bird nest in the maple tree. But I slipped and hurt my knee. May I have a Band-Aid?”
“Oh, Emily! You have got to be careful. Here, let me help you put that on.”
“I guess I won’t try that again. OK, Mom?”
“OK. Now go play and remember, please be careful and think before you do.”
All was quiet until Miah started to scream. Mother ran out just in time to see Beni, Miah, and Emily in Beni’s red wagon careening down the long hill towards the garden. They slammed into the elderberry bush. By the time Mother got there, Miah and Beni were standing up. “We’re OK, Mom,” said Emily cheerfully. “Guess we may have dented the wagon a little.”
“Oh, Emily! You better go to your room for a little while. Miah, go put Beni’s wagon away and both of you come to the house to clean up.”
Soon, there was a crashing sound.
Mother jumped up and ran to Emily’s room. “Emily, what in the world happened in here?”
“I was trying to see if my rock collection would fit in the hall shadowbox. It doesn’t.”
Mother gave her an icy look. “I believe that’s quite evident. Clean up the rocks and set the remains of the shadow box in Daddy’s shop by his saw. We’ll see if it can be put back together.”
Mother walked back into the living room, shaking her head. “What am I going to do with that child? She has more energy than a scared rabbit. There has to be some way to slow her down.”
“Ouch!” came a yell from the basement.
“What now?” wondered Mother. “Emily! Are you all right?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“What happened?”
“I tried to see if the boards from the shadowbox would work for a slide so I sat on them to ride down the stairs. They didn’t work so good and I sort of put a hole in the wall.”
“Emily! Stack that wood by the saw and come up here at once.” Emily solemnly climbed the stairs.
“Emily, you have to think more before you do something that comes into your head. You can’t just go off all cockamamie without thinking of what might happen first. Someone is going to get seriously hurt with your consequences.”
Emily sighed. “But I do like to try things out, Mom. That’s what Daddy says inventors do all the time.”
“Most inventors aren’t eight years old. And you aren’t inventing, you’re destroying things. I want you to go sit in the den until supper.”
“But I hate sitting still.”
“How well I know!” exclaimed Mother. “It will give you time to think. You need to think of ways you can get rid of energy without breaking something. Here’s a paper and pencil. Write me a list of all the ways you can take up lots of energy without breaking something. If you come up with anything good, I can allow you to do it before supper, maybe.”
Emily went to sit down. She chewed on her pencil. “Riding my bike tires me out but it is good exercise. But I’m tired of riding around the yard and Mommy says I can’t go down the street. Weeding takes energy too but I’m not going to suggest that! Jumping rope is fun but I lost my jump rope when I tied it to the tree limb last week. Swimming is fun but we don’t have a pool and running races if fun but Fawn is reading and Miah is mad at me and Ben’s down for his nap. I could pound some nails into boards but I’m not allowed in Daddy’s shop again after last week so I can’t get the hammer. Oh, bother!”
Meanwhile, Daddy came home from work. “Emily is sitting down? Is she sick?”
“No, I’m just trying to get her to see that she needs to think before she goes off in all directions. Today she’s managed to put a hole in the wall, bust the shadowbox you made for our anniversary, and I don’t know what else happened outside no ones’ told me about yet.”
“I she being deliberately destructive?”
“No, she just doesn’t take time to think.”
Daddy got a funny smile on his face. “I think I have a way to help her learn to think. It’s time we watched the weather report together as a family. Send the kids into the den to join us.”
“The news? What good will that do?”
“You come too.”
Soon Emily was sitting next to Dad on the couch and Mother in her favorite chair; the boys and her sister were lying on the rug or on the couch, waiting for whatever it was Dad thought they ought to see.
The news weatherman came on. “In the Atlantic, Hurricane Emily is building up gale force and is expected to hit landfall along the Florida coast.”
“They named a hurricane after me?” gasped Emily.
“Way to go!” shouted her brother.
“Yep, they did,” answered Daddy, frowning at Miah who quickly hushed. “And do you know how much damage a hurricane can do?”
“Lots and lots.”
“Can a hurricane think?”
“Daddy! Don’t be silly,” giggled Emily.
“Do you know anybody else who has a lot of energy, doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, and causes damage to others?” Emily looked surprised. She lowered her head and appeared to be thinking hard.
“See, Emily there’s nothing wrong with having lots of energy. It’s just you to have so much. When you have bunches of energy and you let it get misdirected, people get hurt. Maybe the ones you love. You become Hurricane Emily.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I wasn’t being very good.”
“You were certainly giving Mother a ride,” smiled Daddy. “We don’t mind you having fun and trying new things. But before you do, look at that thing and see if you can see anything dangerous about it first. Then decide if it’s going to be worth the price you’ll pay doing it. Did you get this scrape on your elbow from the downstairs trip with the shadowbox?”
“Uh-huh. And my knee from falling off the swing set.”
“Let’s go get fresh Band-Aids,” Daddy nodded. He stood up. “Think about what I’ve said and, in the future, don’t go about giving the weathermen reason to name a hurricane after you.”