Lenny was having a dream. In the dream, he was the captain of a ship that was sailing across a big ocean. There were pirates attacking the ship and he had a sword with which he was fighting a furious battle with dozens of men. Many wounded and dead sailors lay on the deck and many were fighting with the pirates. Guns were booming and the whole place was full of sound and smoke. It was all terribly exciting!
“Get up, Lenny! Wake up! It’s time for school!” was the sound that he actually heard. He opened his eyes and found Mummy shaking him awake. “School! Oh, no!” he thought. “And here I was the Captain of a whole ship!”
He went along dragging his feet. “Breakfast is so dull. School is so boring. Look at all my classmates! They don’t carry swords. They have pencils and erasers and notebooks! Terrible!” he grumbled to himself all day.
“Lenny! Please pay attention! You’ve got all the sums wrong again today!” said Miss Sarah sternly.
Lenny sat up and tried to pay attention. For a while he thought about fractions and trains that passed each other at different speeds. But after a while, his mind drifted off once again to the sea and the ship and pirates and sea-battles!
The next lesson was enjoyable. In fact, it was the only lesson he liked. They were reading Treasure Island. This was great—all about pirates and treasures and sailing! Why couldn’t they have these things for arithmetic and in the class on geography?
By evening Lenny was tired and fed up. He went back home and it was the same with Mummy. She asked him to have a bath and do his homework.
Then Lennie had a bright idea! He had seen a large carton in the attic. He fetched it down to his room. Then he got a stick from the shed and fixed it into the carton. An old sheet was torn to make a mast and was tied on the stick. He looked around and found an old steering wheel in the shed and fixed it on the carton. Now he could steer the ship too. “But how can I make it move?” he wondered.
“Of course! My skateboard!” he remembered, and went running down to fetch it from the cupboard near the kitchen. He fixed the carton on top of the skateboard. His ship was ready. He put a cushion into it and had a wonderful time ‘sailing’ his ship!
