Question I posted on Formspring/Twitter/Tumblr today: What should my next blog post be about? Zanny suggested: Something that happened to you as a kid that you thought was completely unfair.
Oh man, where do I start? I was assigned the roll as ‘bad kid’ from an early age, which meant that often I got accused for shit I didn’t do. I wasn’t always innocent, but I was falsely accused often enough to have it affect my self-esteem. For example, I remember the first time I had the opportunity to smoke weed when I was twelve. I decided to try it, mainly because I knew that I would eventually be accused of being a druggie one day, regardless if I was or not. As a teen, I would take a hit here-and-there when offered, but I don’t remember actually buying a bag for myself. At the time, it really wasn’t my thing.
Fast forward to high school. I’ve always been a night owl, which made it hard for me to stay awake in class on the rare occasion I showed up to school. A chronic truant, my only crimes against the Oxnard Unified School District were ditching class and smoking Marlboro 100′s in the girls bathroom. I spent many Saturday mornings with a stick with a nail on the end, cleaning up the litter from the previous night’s football game. Just for the truancy, though. I never got busted for smoking cigarettes.
By the time I was seventeen, I stopped caring. On days I went to school, I would drag myself out of bed at the last minute, pull my hair back in a pony tail, and head to school without make-up on. Once I took my seat in class, I would fold my arms on the top of my desk and put my face down so I could nap. Yeah, I was *that* blatant about it. My teachers ignored my sleeping in class the majority of the time.
During my junior year of high school, I dealt with a nasty bout of pink-eye in both eyes. I thought I’d never get rid of it. I treated it with the eye drops I got from the urgent care clinic. Bloodshot as hell, my crusty eyelids would stick together when I blinked. It looked as horrible as it felt.
Sleeping in class with bloodshot eyes earned me a visit to the principal’s office for questioning. He almost seemed disappointed when I showed him the prescription eye drops, proving they were wrong about me. I wasn’t stoned in class, I was just a tired teenager with pink-eye. I was told that I was supposed to let the school nurse know when I had prescription medications on school property, then I was sent back to class.
Back to the writing prompt. Although I was a mischievous kid, I wasn’t a bad one. But after awhile, I started to believe what the adults thought about me. I’ve always felt that I was unfairly pigeon-holed into that roll. I’m not treated that way as an adult, but there’s still a little part of me that’s a bit defensive, always worried that people will wrongly judge me.
But no one said life was fair, eh?
