the thumbtack story
Second grade was boring. Mind-numbingly boring. My teacher was just horrid, too. First of all, she would never let me go to the nurse when I suffered from Not Wanting To Do An Assignment Syndrome. Which is just cruel. Plus, she kept getting on my case about how dirty my fingernails were. I was quite sure that this was none of her stinking business. But I soared through the curriculum nonetheless- I was utterly non-challenged. Math was a breeze, spelling was a piece of cake, and reading? Are you kidding me? I could plow through three chapter books in the time it took my classmates to stumble over one story from the textbook. Basically, I was awesome, and I knew it. This was probably the only year of my life I have ever been cocky. It was also the year in which I performed a little experiment that involved a thumbtack and some very unrealistic expectations about the resiliency of the human body.
One afternoon, as the minutes drew on and the seconds ticked by ever slower, the rest of my classmates were sitting at their desks working quietly on an assignment. I of course had finished my work within the first ten minutes, and sat back in my seat smugly surveying my feeble-minded peers. The poor fools. I imagined them all groveling at my feet, their hands grasping at my ankles as they pleaded and begged to be rescued. “Help us, Karli!” they would cry. “We can’t spell ‘because’! You must help us spell ‘because’!” I would stand straight and tall, the wind blowing in my hair, and spell out proudly: “Because! B! E! C!–”
Wham!
I was rudely pulled from my daydream by the sound of Justin, the class jock, stomping out of the room with the hall pass and slamming the door behind him. Now he was a real jerk. It was because of him that I religiously remembered never to wear a dress on “Friday Flip-up Day”. I scowled at my feet, fuming at the injustice of idiotic second grade boys, when something caught my eye. An errant thumbtack had fallen off the bulletin board and rolled underneath my desk. As I stared at it, the sharp metal tip glinted under the fluorescent bulbs of the schoolroom. In that small flash of light I saw an opportunity, and I wasted no time.
Calmly I sauntered over to my teacher’s desk. I smiled at her and broke off a couple pieces of tape from her dispenser. “My paper ripped,” I told her, and she returned my smile. Back at my desk I bent low over my paper, using one of the pieces of tape to repair the non-existent tear. Watching my teacher out of the corner of my eye, I waited a few moments until I was certain she wasn’t looking, then I slipped under my desk and landed on all fours on the floor. Carefully grasping the thumbtack and tape in one hand, I crawled between the desks until I reached Justin’s empty chair. Silently, methodically, I rolled up the tape and stuck it to his seat. Then I placed the thumbtack pointy side up on top of the tape.
Oh, this was genius. I pictured Justin coming back to his seat, sitting down and yoweeeeeeee! flying up into the air! Quietly chuckling, I started to crawl back to my desk when Justin’s seatmate suddenly caught sight of me. “What are you doing?” he snapped, and slammed his hand down on the seat as he bent over to look at me. I saw his face go white. And at this point my memory gets a little fuzzy.
I remember seeing the puncture in the palm of his hand and I remember my teacher shaking her finger at me furiously, ordering me to write fifty lines about what I had done wrong. I remember being so mad that my plan had been foiled. It would have been so perfect…
The very last thing I remember (and this is the part where all of my junior high teachers are nodding their heads and murmuring ‘ah, so that’s where it all began’) is handing my teacher a sheet of paper on which I had drawn fifty literal lines in a final moment of reckless defiance. I was too scared to look at her, so I didn’t see her expression when she told me to go back and do it again. But oh, to be able to go back in time, and be a fly on the wall so I see the look on her face. I bet she had a little twinkle in her eye. Because I was undeniably in top form that day. Absolutely genius!
Read much Junie B. lately?
Comment by Lei — April 10, 2006 @ April 10, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Hilarious! 3rd grade was my worst year! I wish I had been sneaky enough to pull some stuff off! My teacher called me to the front of the room one day and yelled at me in front of everyone and said that it was not right to like married men! She had found my notebook that said “I love Mr. McDowel.” He was the 8th grade teacher. Oh how I really didn’t like her!!
Comment by JaymiLynn — April 10, 2006 @ April 10, 2006 at 7:32 pm
VERY funny.
Comment by Julie (rarely-home mom) — April 10, 2006 @ April 10, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Brilliant!
Comment by Steven — April 10, 2006 @ April 10, 2006 at 8:58 pm
That is a little scary and a lot exciting. I like the idea of you stickin’ it to the bully.
Comment by Kathryn, DYM — April 10, 2006 @ April 10, 2006 at 9:21 pm
HAHAHAHA! Bored minds get creative!
Comment by Theresa — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 4:37 am
Oh, so sad you got caught! I hated bullies - still do.
Well at least his buddy got the point.
Comment by OddMix — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 5:21 am
Love the thumbtack story. I’ve put your link on my blog. Is that ok w/ you?
Comment by Brooke, ABC Momma — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 6:15 am
Wild, Karli. Absolutely wild!
Comment by Heather — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 9:00 am
LMAO!
Comment by mama_tulip — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 11:12 am
mom on a wire
mom on a wire:…
Trackback by LDS and Mormon Blogs — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Oh, my. Hilarious. I can just see you prancing around in all your cocky glory. I once tried to dump a perfume sample on an annoying boy in my eighth grade music class, but those silly magazine samples require actual skin contact so you can rub them on, not pour, so I ended up with as much on myself as Jamie did on himself. At least no one bled.
Comment by Caryn — April 11, 2006 @ April 11, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Loved the story. I had a bit of a know-it-all attitude in 3rd grade — wonder if it’s something about that age?
Comment by Nancy — April 12, 2006 @ April 12, 2006 at 6:19 am
That’s pretty funny.
Comment by Stephanie — April 12, 2006 @ April 12, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Literal lines! You rebel! I will be very proud if my girls turn out like you!
Comment by Jenn — April 13, 2006 @ April 13, 2006 at 4:11 am
That’s the greatest. Too bad your trick got the wrong guy. In second grade I had a terrifying teacher named Mrs. Wallenstein. We called her Mrs. Frankenstein. She made us color in one direction, up and down, and I got in trouble for laughing at the boy in front of me when he said “kibbles and bits and bits and bits and tits”. He was from Poland and was so cool that he wore leather jackets in the second grade.
Comment by Rae — April 15, 2006 @ April 15, 2006 at 9:34 am
I knew what this story was as soon as I saw the title
Hilarious! I am now rich with background story about why you were under Justin’s desk that day. I should say that I don’t ever remember my hand bleeding, but it was a bit of a shock to see the flat head resting so flush against the skin. Ahh, good times…
Comment by Sam — January 15, 2008 @ January 15, 2008 at 12:09 pm