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My mother climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
It's the highest mountain in Africa, you know. I told the kids at
school and they thought I was being funny.
We were in geography class, studying Indonesian volcanoes. Amir
had just told his latest knock knock joke:
Knock knock
Who's there?
Lava
Lava who?
Lava those craters in Java
 After we groaned, Amir
said that Java volcanoes were puny compared to Mount Kilimanjaro in
Africa. He claimed that Kilimanjaro is higher than any of the Alps in
Europe or the Rockies in America.
That's when I mentioned that mom climbed
Kilimanjaro.
Even my best friends didn't believe me.
Amir said 'I just can't see your mother climbing
a mountain.'
'How could she?' added Lizzie 'She
doesn't jog or roller blade or anything.'
Well, my mother doesn't look athletic but she reached the summit of
Kilimanjaro. I've seen the pictures and certificate. So I opened my big
mouth and blurted out 'She did so climb
Kilimanjaro' and our teacher asked me to prepare a
presentation on the trek. He said it would fit right in with his
unit on Africa. Everyone thought it very funny that I had extra
homework.
I told mom it was her responsibility (a word I hear often) to
make the presentation as she got me into this by climbing the
mountain. I wouldn't exactly say she agreed with me, but she
helped. She showed me slides and notes on Tanzania and they were cool.
I didn't show anything to the other kids when they needled me about it,
just told them to wait and see.
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