lesson 18: adults write their own notes

"Notes?"

"At school."

"For classes? Of course you did. Who else would take notes for you."

"Um, no."

"Fooorrr... why did you write notes?"

"Uh. When I skipped school."

"You wrote your own notes?"

"Yeah. I decided that adults don't need their parents to write notes. They can do it themselves. But my notes were always honest!"

"What, you wrote, 'Ingrid didn't feel like coming to school yesterday, so she didn't."

"Pretty much. The amazing thing was, is that no one noticed for months."

"They didn't notice?"

"I don't think that they actually read them. They just had a piece of paper justifying an absence."

"What happened when they found out?"

"Oh, I went to the principal, promised I wouldn't do it any more. Pointed out that I was doing well in all of my classes so I couldn't really see what the issue was. I never felt guilty about it."

"I'm sure that went over well."

"Not particularly. Had to go to detention for a couple of months, which is pretty much as cool as I ever got. There was a weird sort of status for being seen at detention repeatedly. I didn't tell anyone why, so people imagined all kinds of great misdemeanors. Do you know what the killer of this is..."

"No, but I'm sure you're about to tell me."

"When I skipped school I used to go to the big city library and hang out in the periodicals section and read all kinds of different journals and magazines, I'd treat myself to lunch, and just walk around downtown."

"Nerd. This is one of those times that you should have made something up."

"Yeah. Probably."