Flashback Friday: Elementary School Shenanigans

Yeah, I stole the title. And?

Badass Diva reminded me of a story from the way back when with her story of getting busted in school.

I had always been the kid in the class who ran the grading curve up. The one who took to stuff extra fast and then veged out while everybody else burned out brain cells desperately trying to wrap their minds around new concepts. But since I was the quiet type folk decided it was best not to take that as a reason to harass me.

This particular year was a strange one for me. I had just returned to the school where I had started. It was strange because all of my old friends from K-2 were now 4th graders. I came back as a 5th grader. As you can imagine I was much confused because my folks were now the "little kids". Lunch breaks were timed different and hanging with the "younger" crowd tended to stigmatize you. So much for homecomings.

Damn, the same school that the neighborhood kids would go to IF it were still up! I gotta get my shit together and get the hell up outta this place!!!! But I digress...

Anyway, I tried to make the best of the situation and adjust to my new/old surroundings. But I was bored as hell. Mostly because my teacher didn't seem all that interested in things. Maybe it was just me. I just didn't feel engaged. And the class was (strangely enough) not that large at the time. But there were some characters. And like most classes, the minute the teacher left (which seemed often to me) they cut the hell up. For some reason that just completely offended my sensibilities. So I found myself in a situation where I was alienated from my old friends and my new classmates. As you can imagine, lunch breaks got kinda lonely. So I compensated.

It started out by me strolling home for lunch and heading back to school for afternoon class. But you know how bored kids do. It ended up with me not being in school after lunch. Now I know what you are asking. What the hell was he doing in the afternoon? What I would do is go home, get me something to eat and watch TV. Not just any TV though. In case you haven't been reading up to now, I was the brainy kid. So I watched educational TV. Some days I didn't even waste time getting dressed to leave. Sesame Street started some days and I kept on going.

Of course the party never continues forever. Eventually my mom found out around report card time. She looked at the grades and smiled as usual. Then she turned that sumbitch over and found that I had like 47 half days absent! Now usually that would be the end of a playa. But her mind could not wrap itself around the fact that I had a 3.5 g.p.a. and had missed half of school for two whole months. She was hot! And went to school to find out what the damn deal was. The result of the conference was that she found out I was coming in the morning (most days) and leaving at lunch and not coming back. When she asked how I could be getting such good grades while missing all that school, the teacher was at a loss to explain. So of course she checked out on that ass!

She came home with that ass whoopin' look on her face. I just knew my ass was grass. So she asked me what my damn problem was. I kindly informed her I was bored in school and wanted to come home for lunch. I just "forgot" to go back. So she asked me what was so important at home that I would "forget" to go back to school? "I was watching TV" says I. "TV?!?!?" she bellowed. "Yeah, I would watch Sesame Street, and The Electric Company, and The Math Patrol and this other show where this clown teaches you how to speak French while eating Life cereal" And then I proceeded to conjugate a verb in Francais. Turns out that I was learning grammar, composition, phonics, math, science and a foreign language while skipping school. That along with the fact that I was STILL getting better grades than everybody else kept my ass untanned and my TV privileges uninterrupted.

Of course she made THEM make sure I stayed my ass in school for the afternoons. They got in more trouble than I did strangely enough... If I had been smarter and ate the school lunch before going home she might not have done that since the food wouldn't have been disappearing faster than she expected it to. Ah hindsight...