BUSTED!

Just for the record, never try to a pull a fast one on your mother because she will ALWAYS find out! Once upon a time, I tried to get away with something that was completely harmless and relatively normal by most high school age standards. I tried to cut school. Yes, it's true. This girl could show a little rebellious streak upon occasion. Unfortunately, my rebellions always ended up an epic fail. I really should have learned from those... On this particularly warm spring day, a couple of girlfriends (who shall remain nameless)and myself decided to ditch out of study hall. At the time, we had two study halls- back to back- and had permanent passes to the band room. So, no one would miss us, right? I said Right?!? Wrong. Going out the back door of the band room, up the block, over a block and then down the block to head toward downtown, trying to avoid being seen from the high school windows and the students trapped therein. We were clipping along at a pretty good pace and chatting as we were walking along not paying attention to much of anything until we hit the Dime store (Schultz Bros.) downtown. We were checking out the albums and cassette tapes among other things when all of a sudden I hear "Ahem!" I looked up and felt myself turn pale as a ghost. There stood my mother with a look that would have frozen water. If looks could kill, I would have been lying on the floor. I swear to God she nailed us to the floor with that look. We stared at her in absolute horror- good feelings gone. Oh great. That's it. I'm toast. I am going to get the electric chair for certain. thirty seconds may have only passed but it felt like forever. She pointed a finger at us and then to the car outside the store. With each of us hanging our heads, we all but ran to the car and scrambled in. Mom stomped out the store, climbed in, started the car and drove us back to school. That was the longest 3 minutes of my life. She never said a word the entire time but, Boy Howdy! Did her silence speak volumes! You could feel the anger wash over you in waves and the tension was so think you could have cut it with a chainsaw. No knife could cut thru that type of tension, baby! When we got to school she drove around and dropped us off at the band room back door (which surprised us and made us very relieved to not be marched into the front office to serve a detention for skipping class). I could barely look at her as I opened the car door. My friends mumbled "sorry and thank you" and jumped out of the car as quickly as they could. I put one foot out the door and she grabbed my left wrist- not in a tight grip, but enough to let me know that I was in some very deep doodoo. I turned to look at her and she gave me a radiant smile and said "Have a good afternoon!" Now, don't be fooled by that smile. It wasn't the "hey, nice try, that was funny that you failed!" it was the "you better enjoy your afternoon, because this may be your last one on earth!" How did she know we were there? Simple. People saw us walking past their houses, one just happened to be my aunt's house, she called my mother at work and asked if we "didn't have school today because Jenny just walked past my house with a couple of other girls." It was 115 in the afternoon. Note to self...next time you decide to do something stupid like skip school, make sure you don't walk past a relative's house.