The result

I could even feel the heat through my breath that day. Everything was getting stifling. The sunshine followed by the lovely breeze has gone. All it had that moment was an angry line, with warmth and a sense of fire. No more wind coming through your hair. No more cloud embellishing the sky. No more cozy sunlight coming through the fog. No more fog either. Only the muggy breeze with the heated light and it was killing me, though I knew I wasn’t the only victim.

Mrs. Lan came to our spot like a dead body. The cruel sunlight has taken all of her breath. She almost gasped at me. She pointed to the boy next to me and said:

- Trung, it’s your turn.

Trung stood up. He grabbed his paper, walked forward to the board, and read:

- The sun is tormenting the most stubborn and annoying students here.

The entire room laughed. He stopped and frowned. 

A few polite girls tried to hide their laughter. A few hard-hearted boys pretended to ignore and even laugh harder. The rest of them (including me) clapped our hands and stopped. Trung continued:

- Why did you do this to us? Why can’t you see the misery of us, the poor children who had to sit in the heated class with the old, dusty fans? What did you bring the heat to us? Did we do anything wrong? Oh, yes. We did a lot of wrong things. We used our wonderful brains to take oil and stone coal from the ground. We set up prominent buildings to… sight-seeing. We built factories to produce more cars and motorbikes than we need. We thought we require more, but turn out, we had too much. We killed rare animals and trashed the ocean for fun. We brought chemicals to the air and…

I couldn’t hear him anymore. I looked at him and caught by the flow of thoughts. He spoke the truth. I tried to force my mind to work faster, to understand his words and the problems he said. I recognized how careless I was and how I should be the whole time. I realized how happy I was with the air-conditioner and I didn’t care about the amount of heat it has produced. I realized everything. Later, he stopped. The entire room fell into silence. The conclusions and the understanding of the guilty cover our mind, until when he sat down and whispered to my ear:

- Is it good? Did I say everything correctly?

I nodded.

When everyone left, I stayed in the enormous hall and thought about everything once again. I remembered the pictures of the woman who was standing under the skyline with a tree in her hand. I remember the picture of some old men walking down the street with a big broom in their hands. I remembered the painting of my five years old cousin last Christmas. I still could see it. A colorful picture of a forest with a little number of trees and animals. All that you could detect in it were the sunny sky and the big, empty ground.

Why the forest look so “empty”? Where did the plant go? What happened if there are no more plants? Will the Earth become hotter? I didn’t notice. I wished I did. Did I realize everything when it was all too late? I didn’t identify either. I left the room a moment after that, but when I walked down the road, nothing stayed the same. Rubbish was everywhere. Why didn’t I noticed that? I didn’t see that I used to be a part of the trashed. I didn’t care about Mother Earth. I watched the news every day, and I realized nothing. Do other people realize anything? I asked.

    I rushed home like a summer breath. The heat wasn’t burning me this time. My questions burning me this time. I went home. Leaving the heat outside the house. I didn’t turn on the lights; it wasn’t necessary. I didn’t turn on the fan; I wasn’t hot. I turned on my computer and stepped out. “They” began to say.

            “We must reduce energy. We must plant more trees, we must…” A thousand words “must” jumped into my eyes, I read the resources all day, but around me, nothing change. Nothing ever changes here. People still using cars, motorbikes instead of walk ten steps to the marketplace. People still throw the trash into the water instead of the recycle bin. They did nothing. They could only say it. They didn’t do, that was not their job. Their jobs were to say, to tell people what they should do the whole time. They didn’t care, I didn’t care, and did Trung really care? Or did he just say it? He said it because it was an important mission and well-educated people care about it. Maybe. Maybe that everything they can do is speaking. They just speak. We just speak. I didn’t want to be a part of that “We”. I wanted to do something, rather than just say it. I wanted to change, by actions, I wasn’t good at telling people what to do. I was only good at doing it. But, what could I do? I looked around, tried to figure it out the right way, and then, a poster caught my attention. I closed my computer, locked the doors, and stepped to that postcard. I read it and told myself: “I will do it.”

            ...

            I stepped to the room and met a young woman. She looked at me and I gave her the poster, “I want to sign up.” I said.

            -Sure, - she replied.–You want to be a member of the green club, right?

            - Yes.

            - Please fill this.—She said and gave me a form.

            I filled in and gave it back.

            Since that day, I became a member of a social club. A club that people do everything they could for mother nature. A club where people meet together to come up with new ideas and solutions for tough situations. A club where you do something, more than just say it out loud like you it so well.