Trouble
(Day Eleven)
Guys, I just spent 30 minutes trying to come up with a topic, but I got so tired. I've been feeling sick all week and it's starting to come to a head -- my throat hurts, and my head is hot and I'm just so. freaking. exhausted. So I think I'm going to do a lazy-assed post and then go to be early -- if 10:30pm counts as early, and in my world it does.
I'm going to describe my earliest memory of really getting into trouble:
Early elementary school, Columbus, Ohio. Winterset Elementary. I'm out on the playground with a group of kids, a group of troublemakers, chief of which is my "boyfriend," Ryan Butts. (That was his real name. The second memory I have of getting into trouble is when my teacher told me I shouldn't make fun of people's names, even if their last name is Butts.)
We're hiding in one of those giant cement tunnel things on the playground, one of those things that now that I think about it might be more a construction element than a kid's playground toy. There's maybe four of us. Someone starts telling dirty jokes. I don't remember what they were about, chiefly because I didn't really understand them, but I remember something about peeing.
At some point I got uncomfortable, again mostly because I didn't really get the jokes. (P.S. -- This is the story of my life, kindergarten through college. I don't get the slang, I don't get the drug references, I don't get the witty pop culture mentions. So I laugh like I do know and then wander off before people realize I'm faking.)
So elementary school me wandered off to the other side of the playground. If the story stopped there, I would have been fine. I walked away from the illicit behavior. But no, that's not the end. I walked back into the trouble.
As recess drew to a close, I headed back towards the doors into the classrooms, and, seeing that same group of friends in a circle by the door, I stopped to wait for the bell with them. They had moved on from dirty jokes now and were just listing cuss words they knew.
I knew a couple cuss words, though I didn't always know what they meant. The one I definitely knew was "shit," so that was what I contributed to the conversation.
We hadn't reached the level of maturity where you learn to look around for a teacher before cussing loudly on the playground, so the next logical step was to be reported to our teachers. The next moments are a bit of a blur in my memory. I remember being called in to talk to the lady who was in charge of lunch detention, and being made to write down all the cuss words we used on a detention form that was going to be given to my mother. I had only used the word "shit" and I hadn't really been paying attention to everyone else, so I just wrote down "shit." That wasn't good enough.
"You need to write down every word you used," Detention Lady said. "I'm not stupid, I know you used more than that one. You're not leaving here until you write them all down."
So, like any proper A student, I then produced the most comprehensive cuss word list possible, based on what I could cobble together off of memories of my grandpa's grumpy outbursts and words that sounded like they could be cuss words. My mom was extremely disappointed in me, I had lunch detention the next day, and I had to go straight to bed after dinner -- no reading! -- for a week.
And that's the first time I got in serious trouble as a kid.
Other times I got in trouble:
Guys, I just spent 30 minutes trying to come up with a topic, but I got so tired. I've been feeling sick all week and it's starting to come to a head -- my throat hurts, and my head is hot and I'm just so. freaking. exhausted. So I think I'm going to do a lazy-assed post and then go to be early -- if 10:30pm counts as early, and in my world it does.
I'm going to describe my earliest memory of really getting into trouble:
Early elementary school, Columbus, Ohio. Winterset Elementary. I'm out on the playground with a group of kids, a group of troublemakers, chief of which is my "boyfriend," Ryan Butts. (That was his real name. The second memory I have of getting into trouble is when my teacher told me I shouldn't make fun of people's names, even if their last name is Butts.)
We're hiding in one of those giant cement tunnel things on the playground, one of those things that now that I think about it might be more a construction element than a kid's playground toy. There's maybe four of us. Someone starts telling dirty jokes. I don't remember what they were about, chiefly because I didn't really understand them, but I remember something about peeing.
At some point I got uncomfortable, again mostly because I didn't really get the jokes. (P.S. -- This is the story of my life, kindergarten through college. I don't get the slang, I don't get the drug references, I don't get the witty pop culture mentions. So I laugh like I do know and then wander off before people realize I'm faking.)
So elementary school me wandered off to the other side of the playground. If the story stopped there, I would have been fine. I walked away from the illicit behavior. But no, that's not the end. I walked back into the trouble.
As recess drew to a close, I headed back towards the doors into the classrooms, and, seeing that same group of friends in a circle by the door, I stopped to wait for the bell with them. They had moved on from dirty jokes now and were just listing cuss words they knew.
I knew a couple cuss words, though I didn't always know what they meant. The one I definitely knew was "shit," so that was what I contributed to the conversation.
We hadn't reached the level of maturity where you learn to look around for a teacher before cussing loudly on the playground, so the next logical step was to be reported to our teachers. The next moments are a bit of a blur in my memory. I remember being called in to talk to the lady who was in charge of lunch detention, and being made to write down all the cuss words we used on a detention form that was going to be given to my mother. I had only used the word "shit" and I hadn't really been paying attention to everyone else, so I just wrote down "shit." That wasn't good enough.
"You need to write down every word you used," Detention Lady said. "I'm not stupid, I know you used more than that one. You're not leaving here until you write them all down."
So, like any proper A student, I then produced the most comprehensive cuss word list possible, based on what I could cobble together off of memories of my grandpa's grumpy outbursts and words that sounded like they could be cuss words. My mom was extremely disappointed in me, I had lunch detention the next day, and I had to go straight to bed after dinner -- no reading! -- for a week.
And that's the first time I got in serious trouble as a kid.
Other times I got in trouble:
- Accidentally calling 9-1-1 and then hanging up
- Writing "I hate Miss Banks" on the back of my telling-time worksheet
- Being too close to someone starting a mashed potato fight in the lunchroom
- Almost stealing a bookmark from a Barnes & Noble
- Stealing seashells from the sandbox at Sunday School
- Fighting with my brother and breaking a pane of glass on the back door