The Teenage Me Should Be In Prison

So maybe I'm not feeling all that patriotic today. It's been 10 years since the attack on the World Trade Towers, and that's all anyone can talk about. Pirate Munchkin and I had a long talk about it yesterday, and I was sad and emotional. But today? I just can't deal with it. There are just too many horrible things going on around me lately with my friends and loved ones, and I just can't deal with a tragedy that happened a decade ago. A family member of mine is being admitted to the hospital today for some scary reasons, a dear friend's son is in the hospital after a football injury, another friend just found out some devastating and horrifying news about one of his family members, and I've got another friend who's dealing with court proceedings over something that shouldn't even be in court. Life is not fair. On one hand, I'm really glad that none of the drama is going on with my own household (can't take anymore of that), but on the other hand, I have so many people I'm worried about. So many people in my thoughts and prayers right now.

So I'm taking a break from the sad to talk about something kind of funny.

I graduated from high school seven{ahem}teen{cough, cough} years ago, and when I was in school, things were different. Things that were considered no big deal back then would get a kid in serious trouble now.


1. Nowadays, I would be labeled as someone with Columbine-like pre-attack behavior.

In junior high, after a little ongoing battle with a group of kids at school who were bullying me, I had written my frustrations down on a sheet of paper at home. I was so amazed with myself at my cleverness at how it was written that I brought it to school to show to a friend. On this piece of paper, a couple of specific names were mentioned, along with a specific threats that I wanted to make to them. The piece of paper accidentally fell out of my bag and, to my horror, was found by a friend of one of the people I mentioned. Next thing I knew, I had a war on my hands. This group of other kids made the whole rest of that year a living hell.

In high school, I carried a knife everywhere I went. It was a fishing knife that my mother had found in the seat of a used car she bought. It had a very pretty pearl handle and a blade that was about 5 inches long. I sharpened it all. the. time. (It was so sharp that one time some friends and I were out for the weekend and their mother had packed them an extra large deli-style sandwich. She hadn't cut the sandwich into individual portions, and had forgotten to pack a knife for them to use. I let them borrow my knife, and it sliced cleanly through that sandwich like it was warm butter. We're talking thick French bread, several layers of deli meat, plus lettuce and tomato! We were all a little stunned.) I really wasn't sure if I could ever use the knife on someone if I was attacked, but it made me feel a little safer in an unsure world.

In schools now, any weapon - even a tiny little pocketknife - would be confiscated, and you could even face possible expulsion. Combine the fact that I carried a weapon in school AND had made previous threats on other kids, and I would have probably had the FBI down my throat. The (1st) irony of this, of course, is that I've never been in a physical fight with anyone! I've never punched anyone (well, technically. I've punched Surfer Pirate when we've been playing around), and I've certainly never used a weapon on anyone! I never even fired a gun until I was in my 30's!* The 2nd irony of these stories is that at least two of the boys involved in my junior high incident have previously been, or are currently in prison.


2. I was also a stalker.

I've always been "boy crazy". The first crush I remember was when I was 6 years old, and was in love with a 15 year old. From then on, there was always some boy I was pining over. I had connections at my high school who could get me addresses, phone numbers and school schedules of whoever my latest crush was. I would walk past houses, visit jobs (luckily for me, most teenagers have jobs with easy public access - like fast food and pizza places), and arrange my routine in the hallways between classes in ways that would put me in the path of my latest dream man. I even once managed to get the address to a high school out of state where I guy I liked transferred after moving away (and no, he didn't move to avoid me. I wasn't THAT crazy).

*Picture Samantha Baker in Sixteen Candles mooning over Jake Ryan. Good examples in this clip at moments 0:44, and 1:05. For the record, I did have some younger annoying short guy bugging me on a regular basis as well!
In my defense, I wasn't the only one. I remember an incident of a friend of mine who would regularly stand outside his ex-girlfriend's house at night waiting for a glimpse of her. He was heartbroken when she broke up with him and was having a hard time letting go.

Nowadays, that behavior is called Stalking, and people go to jail for that kind of thing. In my case, I was actually quite shy (something that people who knew me in later years would never believe!) I never had the nerve to go up and just talk to some guy I liked, so instead, I would just open up the opportunity for THEM to talk to ME. If I was in the hall where they were, or passing by their house, maybe they would come up to me and confess their undying affection for me.

...never happened. But I girl can dream, right?


So there you go. My confession of being a hardened criminal.



*I have since fired many different kinds of guns, including an AK-47! Let me tell you, there's nothing that releases tension when you're having an extremely bad day than shooting a semi-automatic AK-47!