Misery

After a pretty easy and uneventful two days of testing, my arrival back at school on Friday was rather disastrous. As I approached the school, I realized that I didn't have my ID. I turned to April, panicked; she gave me her last year's ID. Everything just happened so fast. I now see how stupid it was of me to try to use April's ID; the hall aides are especially malevolent with me after the editorial I wrote for the school paper, and I had money. I should have just bought a temporary ID; the hall aides would have taunted me, but that would have been bearable.

Instead, I got written up for "false identification." I was called out of first hour, world history (a class that had already been going badly because of my realization that I had completely forgotten about the DBQ that was due), to go to Mr. Hurder's office, where he lectured me about trying to see things from the hall aides' point of view and so on. I fully accept responsibility for the false ID thing; I'm not going to like ISS on Wednesday, but I can handle it. It did make me mad, though, that the referral called me "rude and argumentative." I seriously wasn't, I don't think. I know what being argumentative is; I can do argumentative. Asking questions is not being argumentative (although Mr. Hurder said, "If someone asks you to do something, you do it. You don't ask questions." What am I supposed to do? I can't just blindly follow the orders of these people!). It was kind of funny when Mr. Hurder tried to schedule an ISS session for me. ("Monday." "Oh, I have the AP English test that day." "Tuesday, then." "Um, I have AP world history." He got a tad peeved at that point. "Well, what day do you not have a test?" [me in tears] "Sorry...")

The most embarrassing part was returning to world history with a tearstained face and being asked about my ordeal. The whole class supported me, but I felt bad for disrupting the period on such a crucial day (the AP test is this coming Tuesday, so Mr. Longhenry was really hurrying to get through the material). I told the class that I was "rude and argumentative," and Will laughed out loud for a long time. I don't know if that means that it's funny that a person like me would be rude and argumentative, or if it's funny that anyone would be written up for such a crime. I can't believe I bawled in front of Beth Wilson, Kristen Ott, Matt Strong, Ellie Kiefer... it's painful to think about.

Actually, aside from having a bad headache from crying, the rest of the day wasn't too bad. I got an A on my word paper (Aashesh got higher than me, and it was annoying that he bragged about it, but I was actually really happy for him; I'd pretty much expected him to get a C or D, after reading the paper the night before it was due). I made some stupid mistakes, but overall, I'm just glad the whole ordeal's over. I survived the word paper. I can say that now. I managed to finish the DBQ sixth hour and turn it in, and Mr. L. wasn't mad (I think my crying in first hour had something to do with that). I don't understand what's going on in calculus at all, but that's a fairly normal occurrence. I think I can make it through the rest of the year. Everyone was being really nice to me, which was kind of embarrassing, but not bad. Sapna told me she would make brownies for me; I don't know if she'll actually do that, but it was a nice gesture. Also, my mom told me that my sister's softball coach--whom I don't even know--overheard the hall aides talking about me in the teacher's lounge, and that it was inappropriate; she plans to take the issue to Mr. Hurder. I know that I broke the rules, so I doubt that it will get me out of ISS, but I hope that the hall aides experience some retribution. They obviously haven't taken my article to heart and tried to be more polite and/or sympathetic; when I was caught with the fake ID, they (the same two women from before) kept yelling, "Write that in the newspaper! Write that!"

Then, that evening, I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Sonya and April, which was very funny and, while not exactly true to the books, preserved a lot of the funny little quips and good British humor that makes the books good. Alan Rickman, who I like from Galaxy Quest and the Harry Potter films, was hilarious as the depressed robot Marvin, and the guy who plays Guy in Galaxy Quest was pretty funny as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the egomaniacal president of the galaxy. The Vogons were mind-numbingly bureaucratic, and the scene where the computer, Deep Thought, pronounces that the answer to "life, the universe, and everything" is "forty-two" was very nice. I was very glad to have a good movie to go see with friends to take my mind off of the events of the morning.

April told me on the way home that Mrs. Longhenry told the class that April and I are at a "stage three" of Kohlberg's theory of moral development, which we learned about earlier this year, that we think that the rules are just a game. It made me mad, and embarrassed. I feel like I've been trying all year to impress Mrs. Longhenry, and every time I do something good--get a high score on an essay or a test, or write a good article for the paper--I turn right around and embarrass myself by failing a highlannotating assignment or getting suspended for trying to use a fake ID. But maybe I really am at a low moral stage. Sometimes I feel like the only reason I follow the rules and everything is because I fear punishment, and also maybe because of my "good little girl" persona.

This weekend I've mainly been studying for the AP world history test, although my sister and I did go garage sale-ing yesterday. My best acquisition: the soundtrack of Forrest Gump, a 2-disc-long compilation of some really good songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It prompted me to make a compilation CD of my own, something I've been meaning to do for a while to take care of the four or five CDs on which I mainly listen to three or four songs only. I used six or seven from the Forrest Gump CD, including "Blowin' in the Wind" (Joan Baez), "California Dreamin'," "San Francisco," and "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." They make me very happy, and I'm starting to get over the whole ID thing, although my stomach still aches with embarrassment and anxiety whenever I think about having to face my world history classmates tonight at the review session at Barnes and Noble.