The First Time I Got In Trouble
For me, school was just a series of annoying interactions further enforcing that I was wildly unpopular. I was shy, awkward, and took awhile to grow into my head. Yes – I mean literally grow into the size of my gargantuan tower of a dome. There was, however, a bright light for one of my academic years. In Kindergarten, I was cool. For whatever reason, I led my group of friends and had serious power. They listened to me and I abused the shit out of this. Looking back, this could actually shed some light on why I was massively unpopular later in life, but that’s not the current focus. My reign lasted for one school year and has yet to return. Being in charge is awesome. I was put in charge by my classmates on a Monday early in the year and I was in full abuse mode by nap time that same day.
At recess, we played “Doctor” (don’t be gross) where we would diagnose our classmates with various diseases. As a group, we would poke their arms with mulch (like needles) and give them a prescription for rocks to eat before they left. I was dolling out arm pokes and rock prescriptions like candy*, but only one girl really got nailed. But, as predicted, in the end she got the “W”.
*For the record, no one actually ate rocks.
The girl we were diagnosing (I’ll call her ‘The Rat’) did not want to play with us, so we made her. Our group sat The Rat down and we poked her arm with mulch to see what disease was killing her. The Rat got all mad and told on us (dirty bitch). Playing “Doctor” apparently made the teachers unhappy?! As the leader, I was never doing the arm probes. So, technically, I was doing the job of any good CEO or Dictator (synonyms) by being just hands off enough that I could not get in trouble, but still involved enough to push the pain. Apparently Kindergarten is not China, and I got in trouble before recess was over.
When she told on me, The Rat went to a teacher that was actually nice to kids and wouldn’t yell. At least not up and to this point. This formerly nice teacher pulled me and one other boy aside for this mess. Me, this little boy, and NO ONE ELSE. Look, I wasn’t making these other dumb kids use mulch on classmates, they had free wills. Even still, just me and this other kid (who probably went on to become a meth addict or make other poor decisions like that since this was clear discrimination) were put in the principal’s office while they decided our fate. The nice teacher somehow took a turn and the anger took over.
We were told that our parents were going to be called and that we were in big trouble. Calling my parents was the adult equivalent of firing me, stealing all of my money and punching me in the face. No, my parents weren’t going to punch me in the face, but this was a big enough deal to me that it was like all of the things listed above happening to you as an adult. No good could come from this.
So, I did what any good little girl in trouble does – I freaked out.
Photo source: http://www.motifake.com/
The freak out seemed to work and the parental threat was mitigated (a bit). The details from this point forward get fuzzy at best. I was so overwhelmed by authority being upset with me, I could barely see.
As penance, I made The Rat a picture of us being friends on the playground, said I was sorry (which I wasn’t) and promised not to poke her arms with mulch again (which is also bullshit because I WASN’T THE ONE DOING THE POKING). More so than anything, I was sorry that I was taking the heat for the dumb people. And, I was sorry I got caught.
In the end, no parentals were called but there were a lot of annoying adult speeches on how this was not a nice thing to do. I imagine that the teachers were in the back stifling laughter, but I’ll never know. If I were a teacher and this happened with my students, I would excuse myself to the break room and have a good chuckle. That much is certain.
Moral of the Story: Take two of these and call me in the morning.
