I wasn’t a big fan of high school myself.   The only reason I stayed in school the whole day was because the only class I liked was 8^th period, and coincidentally it was Latin. I was so annoyed I didn’t have  third period Latin I, because I would have been out of the building every day by the beginning of fourth. Well, I like to believe that I would have boldly walked out of the building and cut class every day, but the truth is I was afraid of getting in trouble. I had a long history of being blamed for things I hadn’t done.

My chief problem was having a best friend who wanted to be a nun and looked the part, even though I knew she was the devil incarnate. She never ever got in trouble.

In eighth grade she went up to the trash can next to the teachers desk, dropped in a piece of paper, climbed in the trash basket and began to vigorously leap up and down, stomping that poor little piece of paper to smithereens, smiling  sweetly at our teacher the entire time , who nodded back and beamed at her. She must have been whooping it up in that wastebasket a solid two minutes.

Now SHE could have cut class every day and brought in a forged note, with not the slightest effort made to disguise her handwriting with little hearts and smiley faces dotting the “i”s, saying she had to leave early to go to church for the festival of Our Lady of Mendacity, and totally get away with it.

But am I bitter about this, more than thirty years later? Of course I am.