The year was 1991 or so. I was a 16 year old Junior in high school, the same age as my daughter Trinity is right now actually. My school had an open campus so at lunch time we could leave campus...and lunch was 45 minutes long. Across the street was the mall with restaurants and a food court. Next door was Arby's and Taco Bell. A block away was a convenience store. I want you to pause and soak in the possibilities here. Lunch was glorious!
Sometimes we would stay on campus to eat, like if it was bagel dog or nacho day, other than that we left campus for lunch. The key was that once the bell rang you did not stop at your locker. You did not meet up with your friends. You took off straight to the the predetermined lunch location and placed your order because that got your order in before everyone else from the school. You would then sit with your friends eating your food watching as the endless line of students waited for their order. My dad gave me $3 a day to eat with which actually went pretty far. I could get two bean burritos with sour cream. A giant pizza bread thing at the bread shop. A giant corn dog at the corn dog place. A big order of fries at the sandwich place. If we trekked down to Subway about 10 minutes away I could even get a 6 inch bologna sandwich with everything on it. One day, My best friend Michelle and I weren't very hungry, but our lunch money was burning a hole in our pockets. So we walked to the mall and went to the coffee place. Michelle decided to get a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans because they were so yummy. Then we walked to the convenience store and I got a Jolt Soda. For those of you who were born after the 90s, Jolt's slogan was "all the sugar and twice the caffeine". It was an energy drink before there was energy drinks as we know them now. So we sat our butts down on the curb and enjoyed our "lunch". We shared the espresso beans and I drank the whole Jolt. My 16 year old brain had no idea what insanity I was setting myself up for. We shuffled back to school and got to our next class just in time. Michelle and I had Language Arts and she sat right in front of me. On a good day the class annoyed me. I really should have been in the next level up so I was bored but didn't do my homework because I didn't see a point. I would get 100% on all tests, read way ahead of the class and knew the material inside out and backwards. I'm positive I exasperated that teacher to no end. So this is the class I am in after my lunch of caffeine and sugar. Mr. C decides it will be a silent reading period because people were not keeping up with the reading homework of the book we were studying. Everyone groans. I had read the book in 2 nights and that was weeks ago. I fish my book out of my back pack wondering where in the book I should even read. I'm annoyed I cant just draw... what a waste of time. The class settles into silence as everyone starts to read. After a few pages I start to feel strange. My heart starts to beat harder and I'm like woh, whats this? After a few more minutes I can feel my blood pulsing through my veins! I start to quietly get Michele's attention to see if shes feeling weird. I'm poking her back and she turns around. I try to whisper to her but I'm hushed my the teacher with a glare of doom. Going just by her facial expression, I could tell shes feeling weird too. The next 45 minutes can only be described as torture. I could NOT sit still. My leg was bouncing, I was fidgeting, my brain was on overdrive, I was shaking. Mr. C kept shooting me dirty looks. I have no idea what he though was going on. The whole class was silent and here I am trying to suppress the ball of crazy, jittery energy I have become. I was really, really hard! Finally the class is over and Michelle an I RAN out of there. She was freaking out also and we both agreed that our choice of lunch was the worst idea ever and we were never doing that ever again! When I think back to this day It always makes me laugh. I had no idea what I was doing to myself, I had never even had chocolate covered espresso beans before that day! Tell me about something you did that seemed like a good idea at the time, but didn't end as you expected. I'd love to hear them!
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AuthorI'm so tired. The children are so not tired. |