to jessie, with lav. <3

A memory from the past 4 years

Tuesday night I fell asleep with the telephone in my bed. Wednesday morning I woke up to a ringing pillow. Casandra says that we need to leave early in order to arrive at school on time. Orange scones sound like a good way to start the best day of life. Ever. Where else but at Panera Bread, North Andover? Employee discount. Check. Whaaaaat? Anyway, we ended up paying sixty-five percent less than anyone else would have. Even though we spent that money on the gas to get there, it seemed cool anyway.
Fieldtrips to the Gardner Museum always make my unexamined life worth living. Maybe because it counts as a full school day, but most likely because Rembrandt’s self portrait gives me shivers. At any rate, today was to be a glorious day of orange scones and Rembrandt. Be still, my heart.
We arrived at school before any bells even thought about ringing, which is impressive. Casandra and I wanted to suck the marrow out of the bones and spend our homeroom period with Mr. Paszko, who is completely insane but we still seem to worship him anyway. We checked into our homerooms and then ran through the hallways toward the art room [scones and iced coffee in hand]. I’m not sure how, but Mr. Quinn saw this spectacle. It may have been Casandra’s “flaming fire truck red” hair that caught his eye, but it was most likely our sprinting through the empty hallways while declaring, quite loudly, our affinity for orange scones and iced coffee that got his attention. He told us to throw it all away in the bathroom. Did he just suggest we pour our happiness down the drain in a smoke-filled lav.? It may have been jealousy, but we weren’t about to give up without a fight. Revolution!
Being the X-treme radicals we are, we shoved the drinks and scones into our bags. I guess we figured that when the coffees leaked all over our bags, we could just ring them out into our mouths. I’m not sure what we figured, but we walked out of the bathroom carefully as to not spill [we didn’t want to suck coffee out of our belongings unless it was absolutely necessary]. I’ll admit it; we thought we were pretty slick. You know, anarchy and all that jazz. Just then, out of nowhere, possibly out of a janitor’s closet, Mr. Quinn jumped out. He wasn’t going to give up on this fight of good vs. evil; he’s a classic hero [not unlike that of Beowulf]. He knew what we were up to. He was plotting our demise all along; Casandra and I didn’t even prepare!
We were sent back into the bathroom as the pledge of allegiance was sounded over the announcements. Irony? Yes. [This time our coffees flowed down the drain like sweat down a pistol grip]. Our orange scones were tossed in the trash along with dirty paper towels and left there to rot. I think we started to cry a little. Just when we thought our luck could not improve, we opened the door to find Mr. Quinn, in all of his glory, taking down our names for after school detention. I was impressed. I was impressed that our brilliant minds had been outsmarted. I was impressed that the system was swallowing us, whole. I was impressed that this man had been my principal for eight out of my twelve years of school and yet still proceeded to call me, “Mary Griffith”, after I clearly stated, “MAY-gen GIFF-ord”.
All of my emotions took over, and this word vomit splattered out of my mouth and onto his face. It was similar to that of pancake batter on a hot griddle. I saw it heat up.
“Asshole”… oh God.
“IN-HOUSE SUSPENSION!”, he cried out.
I walked toward the room still a bit in shock of what had just happened. I was surprised at myself. Typically, I insult people when they are not around; I try to avoid confrontation at all costs. C’est Vrai. Vive la revolution! Mr. Nangle tried to defend me as I walked the long, lonely, plank to in-house suspension. Mr. Quinn made some sort of hot-shot remark about how sad my day must be, missing my fieldtrip and all, then chuckled to himself. I swallowed some more of that word vomit, it tasted like orange scones and dirty paper towels. This only reminded me of the current situation and I wasn’t sure if I should go hang myself in the bathroom with my shoelaces to prove a point, or if I should laugh hysterically at this hilarious predicament. I chose the latter. I was wearing clogs.
As I entered the in-house room the students looked me up and down and I could see them belittling my delinquency in their minds. I felt like Arlo Guthrie sitting on the “group W” bench. I sat there long enough to notice that coffee was leaking out of my bag and onto my lap. There was all of this profound stuff written on the walls of my cubicle. Unfortunately, it was written in Spanish and I wasted all four years of high school on French. Je ne comprend pas, c’est dommage!