Framed

One - Confetti and Karma

Once in a while parents randomly tell their teenagers to go places, which generally isn’t a major problem. Sometimes they tell their teenagers to go to the supermarket to get milk. Other times they tell their teenagers to go to the dentist to fill their cavities. Well, my parents told me to go to a delinquent boarding school to fix my entire existence.

Since you asked, I had innocently been eating a turkey sandwich (everything but cheese because I’m lactose intolerant) when they first informed me that I had less than a month to pack up for a life of doom they selfishly decided to throw upon me. It was relatively frightening news to hear, but as I chewed my processed meat and considered the new information, I realized I was mainly just relieved about them not having approached me about any recent civil demand letters in the mail.

For some reason my parents always seem to overreact about my “crimes,” preferably known as my achievements. If a person is not in jail for anything they did, they obviously are not the worst people in the world. If a person is not the worst person in the world, or even relatively the worst person in the world, that means there are more important things to worry about than that person. By “that person” I mean myself, and by worse people I mean nudists, cannibals, and anyone on bath salts. But somehow, no matter how hard I tried to raise awareness of these evils, the conversation always seems to bounce right back to me.

Me.

That was really all my overly-sophisticated yawn of a family would ever talk about, it seemed. Lynne did this and Lynne did that. Clearly they weren’t saying it in a good way, because if there had ever been a time when my parents had been proud of me since my kindergarten graduation they’ve done an outstanding job at hiding it. Even my teachers had a lot of negativity to share about me, obviously, since my parents consistently received monthly emails from them which I probably wasn’t supposed to read but read anyway.

“I’m sure Krysalynne is a very intelligent girl, but when I got to know her and her report card, I realized most of her talent lies in the subject of breaking things and causing a ruckus. If she would just try harder and put any effort into her work and making the classroom a better environment, I feel that she could go very far. Also, I would like her apology for breaking my left hallux and almost running me over with a stolen security cart.”

“If you are not already aware, your daughter hasn’t been participating as expected in the classroom. She is completely oblivious to the rules and has an IQ smaller than that of a goldfish which, by the way, has a memory of up to three seconds. I have requested from her a typed, 12 pt. font, 5 page apology letter for almost hospitalizing me with the large potted plant she deliberately dropped onto me from the window.”

Et cetera, et cetera. My teachers don’t have a sense of humor. Once I totally pantsed Hubert Huston during our history presentation and Mr. Lancaster didn’t laugh even though Hubert was wearing day of the week tighty whities and everyone knows he’s just a stupid nerd. And when I called Mrs. Marlin “Mrs. Fish” on the first day of school she took it up the butt for some reason. I could only hope and pray that the teachers at the school I was headed to were less uptight.

Anyway, school wasn’t the only place that led to all the parental concern. I seemed to cause quite a few problems that the government didn’t like because they were illegal or I was underage or they could result in homicide and stupid things like that which shouldn’t really matter. But, I’ll spare you the details. Nobody important cares too much about my past, so if you really wanna know I’d suggest you start paying attention in your US History class like I didn’t, because now it’s time to press fast forward on the remote control of my life.

A week and a half after my parents told me I was soon to be an official student in delinquent school, it was the Saturday of the football game versus Heritage Preparatory, the hideous purple felines. It was the last game of the year, and I heard it was one of their traditions to sacrifice their smartest student to Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of the cats. Since nearly nobody could win against us, the Valley Academy ranchers, I simply had to see if the sacrifice ritual would take place on the field. I had climbed up to the side of the announcers booth and watched the entire game next to this cool rustic cannon that they shot confetti out of as tradition whenever we won. There was probably confetti inside already, but I also filled it with a smelly yellow concoction I had miraculously put together using nothing but a couple possibly toxic materials from the chemistry lab. It was funny because when, in a sudden turn of events, the ranchers lost the game by 5 points, it took everyone in the field at least 300 seconds to process why all the people in the bleachers were screaming and splattered in my yellow concoction.