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| By Chris Stevens Sunday night, I fell asleep with the knowledge that both St. Jude's and La Reina did not feel the need to make their students attend school the following day. However, my school, being responsible and dignified, of course made me and my fellow attendees show up while everybody else was spending the day effing around. I arrived at school Monday morning with this aweful taste in my mouth and felt tired as I always do, but I had an epiphony that morning sitting in Mr. Kruse's D block Physics class. The epiphony came to me something like this: "JESUS CHRIST! I FORGOT TO GO TO MY SATURDAY DETENTION! I'm screwed now..." I went about the next couple periods without giving any more thought to it. During Intemediate Guitar (a class in which the teacher had once again neglected to show up), the attendence office phoned the substitute and had her ask me to go up there. I realized that it was in fact for the neglecting of the afforementioned detention. On the walk up the mountain to the attendence office, I met up with German John, and he questioned me as to why I was out of class several minutes early. I told him my sordid tale and asked him what he thought they might do to me once I got up there. Johnny, who is the son of a faculty member, seemed like a person who would be knowledgable about such issues and his personal opinion was that they would probably give me an additional Saturday detention. I continued along the steep path beside the track and ran into Scoble. He rambled to me about a great many things when I explained my story, but essentially the vibe I recieved from him was "You're screwed, man." I was sure that I was to some degree "screwed", but I forged ahead believing that I was only marginally screwed. After carefully stowing away my prized Ovation guitar in the trunk of my BMW, I finally reached my destination: the attendence office that I had been called up to nearly 15 minutes prior. I had to then stand in line with the rest of the felons for an obnoxious period of time and wait my turn to meet with Mr. Hauca, Dean of Death. When my number finally came up, I cautiously strolled into his confining office and told him my name. He started out by telling me what I already knew: I had missed my detention. Then he muttered something about it being a "suspendable offense" and I began hyperventilating. He explained to me that the punishment I was to recieve was an "in-school" suspension, which essentially entailed me showing up to school...then leaving immediately after, as I always do anyway because I have no self-motivation to involve myself with extra-curricular activities. He continued by telling me that it would go on my record as a suspension and that he had to call my dad. He asked me for my dad's phone number and I blindly complied. I left promptly after this discussion and walked around for the rest of the day abnormally shaken. I returned home that day under the impression that my dad had spoken to Hauca and had probably asked every single detail about WHY the situation is what it is. I opened the garage door and noticed that my dad had parked in the very center of the garage, leaving no space for my precious vehicle, so I had to park out on the street. Normally, I would ask my dad why he would do such an insane thing like park in the center of the driveway, but instead, I rushed up into my room without saying ANYTHING to him, shut the door, and started on my homework. I continued through the afternoon on my homework in my room, but I was getting thirsty. I HAD to leave the room to get a drink. So, I took the risk, and ran past my dad's desk where he was working, ran down the stairs and searched frantically for liquid satisfaction. There was nothing in the fridge in the kitchen, so I headed out into the garage to see if there was anything in the fridge that resides there. There were two items in this fridge: one was my brother's nasty generic brand cream soda, which I quickly turned away from, and the other was a juice box of the famed Hawaiian Punch, which I remember loving from my childhood. I snagged a juice box and fled up to the safe-haven of my room. For the next two days, these two drink items would be the only thing besides water that would be supplied in my house and it would end up nearly killing me... I went on through the night becoming more and more dehydrated, but still facing the truth that if I dared leave my room, the chances of my dad confronting me about my suspension would greatly increase. So, I was able to somehow keep myself occupied until dinner and then immediately after that, I returned once again to my room. I spent a while talking to people online until it was bedtime. I had no difficulty falling asleep because I was dead tired. No less than an hour later was I up again, searching for something to swig down. I only half remembered what I had found before, so I went down to the fridge in the kitchen again. To my surprise, there WAS indeed something I had missed: a jar of Trader Joe's apple cider, which had probably been around for at least a month and a half, but I was far too dilusional to realize this. I grabbed a tumbler and filled it to the brim with the fragrant stuff and marched my way back upstairs, nearly falling flat on my face several times in the process. I arrived safely in my room once again and sat down on the bed with the cider in hand. I took a massive swig which depleted about half the tumbler. I remembered now that you were usually supposed to heat the cider up before drinking it. However, by the time I realized this, the consequences of my actions were already apparent. The stuff was so overloaded with random herbs and spices that when it finally went down my throat, I felt like I had just received a kick in the teeth. The cider gave me a brief, piercing headache, but I was soon over it, and fell asleep once again. I would undoubtedly wake up several more times that night as I always do, but nothing of significance happened. I had chosen that day to begin taking the Minocycline that my dermotologist had perscribed for my now under control acne. The label warned of drowsiness and dizziness, which I knew to be accurate from past experience. I woke up the next morning twenty minutes earlier than expected to the sound of my dad yelling at me to get out of bed. I had assumed be his reaction to me the previous day that perhaps he had not received the call from my Dean, but now the truth had been revealed. My dad must have found out that the original foundation for the suspension was because of my first period tardies, so to rectify the situation (which I had pretty much rectified already) he decided to wake me up extra early. He didn't directly express a reason for why he was doing this, but I knew quite well, as he did the real motivation behind his actions. I would get to school somewhat early this Tuesday, but because of the medication, I was abnormally and massively tired. This day was the day of my "suspension" and would pass uneventfully until the end of school. Robert and Brian wanted to head over to In-N-Out on Ventura and I was to be the driver. As I have already mentioned, I was supposed to leave school immediately after it got out that day, but the one in a million chance happened that I would have to return to campus after school hours. I pretty much had no gas and In-N-Out was a reasonable distance away. This combined with my car's problems with gas mileage as of late made me extremely worried about whether or not I would make it to my destination, return to school, and then be able to drive back home. I reluctantly agreed to drive anyway because Robert couldn't move his car because it had stuff he needed for the Talent Show tryouts, and Brian's car is disgusting on top of him being a bad driver. So, off we were... When we arrived at In-N-Out, the drive-thru was packed and the parking situation was difficult. I managed to find some place to park legally in the shopping center around the corner. Ventura Blvd. seemed like it was the lowest point of elevation on the planet that day and the sun beat down harshly without being inhibited by clouds. This particular In-N-Out was of the variety that lacked an inside. Continued on next page>>> |
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