Word Count:\u00a0 393<\/p>\n

He was unarguably the smartest kid in his class. Though a sixth grader, Steven was probably the smartest kid in the whole school. He loved books more than ball games. He loved math and literature and science. Science he loved most of all.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d spent almost a year on his entry for the state Science Fair project this year. It was the most important thing in his mind and he dedicated all the time he could give it, determined to have a legitimate win.<\/p>\n

Steven felt he\u2019d won last year but he was never awarded the prize. The committee decided that since a little girl had been killed in the explosion and so many others hurt that it was best to just not declare any winners at all.<\/p>\n

Oh, they knew that it wasn\u2019t his fault because he had no intention of setting it off and didn\u2019t think he even could,\u00a0 and only reprimanded the two older boys who had because they thought it\u2019d be fun. No one felt they had really believed there was any danger, just laughed at Steven when he warned them that what he had built for display was a bomb.<\/p>\n

Some believed he should be banned from submitting an entry. His parents finally convinced the committee that even Steven hadn\u2019t believed it would work. He was warned not to make anything explosive. To focus instead on something that would benefit all.<\/p>\n

Why would I make something that wouldn\u2019t do what it was supposed to?<\/em> But he was smart enough not to say that to even his dad. He had no intention of setting it off and tried to stop those two jerks that did. He really did deserve to win, he felt. It was the best project at the fair last year.<\/p>\n

The committee took a long time at his table. Asked questions and inspected his work. They had to agree that his chemical substitute for flour was a great concept. It would save on agricultural land use, was cheap to produce, and with the nutrients added in, much more healthy than rye and wheat for the heart.<\/p>\n

Steven was awarded first prize of a thousand dollars. He was given a plaque with his name in gold. But the celebration dinner planned for April was cancelled because so many of the committee members were hospitalized or already dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Word Count:\u00a0 393 He was unarguably the smartest kid in his class. Though a sixth grader, Steven was probably the smartest kid in the whole school. He loved books more than ball games. He loved math and literature and science. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15],"tags":[25,24],"class_list":["post-1455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100-days-2012","category-horror","tag-100-days-2012","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1456,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}