As the school year draws near, I felt it would be appropriate to tell you all a true story that happened to me on the last month of my junior year. Me, a friend and two other guys were sitting at lunch, eating our food and discussing quantum physics. For no apparent reason other than stupidity, my friend takes my pizza box and starts drawing something on the inside cover. I look to see what he is drawing, and lo and behold, it is a klansmen. Well, being the good citizen that I am, I suggest drawing him a bucket of fried chicken. It doesn't end there. He goes even farther, drawing him fancy shoes, some bling, and a speech bubble next to his mouth which read "check out my grill". It was the ultimate irony - A black klansmen. All was going well, until the trash lady, a.k.a. the disciplinary administrator, came to pick up our food. She had almost gotten to our table, and my friend hadn't even noticed. So I grab the box, roll it up and toss it in the trash just as she gets to our table. I thought we were in the clear. But, five minutes later she comes to our table with pizza box in hand. Now, I am thinking to myself. Why the heck was she going through the trash? Was she hungry? Don't they pay her enough so that she can afford food on a daily basis? Well, clearly dissapointed that the pizza box was empty, she decides to exact her revenge on us. Gathering all four of us, she takes down our names and phone numbers, and takes us to the ISS( in school suspension) room. There we wait while she files some papers, still walking around with the empty pizza box. Now, you probably want a little more info on the other two guys with us. Well, one of them is mentally handicapped, and the other is his brother, not mentally handicapped. Anyway, once she gets the papers, she takes us to a private room, where she begins explaining that racism is wrong, not to discriminate, this could offend someone, etc. See, I'm not one to be picky, but wasn't the pizza box already in the trash before anyone could find it? This is what apalled me. She was basically saying that an african-american going through the trash could find this and be offended. Can you believe that? The nerve of some people. Anyway, then she asked us who drew the offending picture, and why. This is where I had several options.
Option One - Blame the mentally handicapped kid. Sure, its wrong, and his brother would probably be pissed. But look at it from my perspective. If you blame the mentally handicapped kid, he can't get in trouble. He doesn't know that what he did was wrong or offensive. He doesn't even differentiate black from white. Thats how mentally handicapped he is. So, I say he did it, my friend gets away with it, and no one gets in trouble. Everyone wins and we all have icecream at the end.
Option two - Blame television. It may seem like a stretch, but don't people blame violence and people killing each other on violent video games? We could just say that we saw it on tv. Say.. the Chapelle show. He did a similar skit where he portrayed a blind black-white supremacist, and our case is similar. We just say that we saw it on the Chapelle show, and our easily influenced little minds subconciously recreated what we saw on TV the day before. Thinking back to some article she read on the correlation between TV and peoples' behavior, she accepts the answer and we are free to go. Everyone wins and we all have icecream at the end.
Option three - This is what really happened. My friend confessed to drawing the picture, and I said I helped him with the ideas. I don't know why that was of any importance. There is no rule saying what we can or can't talk about. But, she insisted that I confess to giving him ideas, since I was the last person she saw holding the box and my friend had already confessed to drawing the picture.
Then she handed out referals with our names on them. But, we got lucky. She said that since it was our first offense, she wasn't going to file the papers. She did warn us though. She told us that if we did it again, we would get a ten-day suspension. There was one more piece of business to take care of after that. Calling our parents. We each had to call our parents and explain to them what happened. Once again, I had several options as to how to handle this manner.
Option One - Pretend to call my parents, and make up something really crazy to freak her out. Here is how it would go:
"Hey mom. Yeah, I'm calling from school. I'm kind of in trouble. What? No, I didn't use my mind powers to set the school on fire in a fit of rage. Don't worry, they'll rebuild it. Ok, I gotta tell you...No mom. I didn't get into a fight with a teacher. I know, I know, he is still in the hospital. Well... It'll grow back eventually."
Option Two - This one is a bit mean, but funny anyway:
"Hey mom. Yeah, I'm calling from school... Everythings fine.Whats wrong? You don't sound so good... A heart attack? What.. Is...Is he ok? Where are you? Are you at the hospital...ok.. How did this happen?Oh.. Jeez...This... This is bad. Hey, is this a bad time to tell you I got in trouble?"
Option Three - Going in a little bit of a different direction this time:
"Hey dad. Yeah, I'm calling from school... Everythings fine.Whats wrong? You don't sound so good... A heart attack? What.. Is...Is he ok? Well.. Where is he? The hospital?... Ugh. Thats terrible. What did the doctors say?...oh. Ugh. I hate it when they say 'to be continued'. Anyway, I gotta tell you something."
It pretty much ends there. After calling our parents, we say our goodbyes and head back to class. So what did I learn from all this? Damnit, I should have blamed the retarted kid.
