Breaking And Entering

The scene of the crime is probably not even there anymore.

I have to confess to regularly picking a lock. Of course, this happened when I was in 7th grade and when I was a minor and you can’t actually prove that I did it. So, I think that covers me up fairly well. If anybody wants to press charges after I tell my story, I will be shocked and astonished. When I was twelve, I was driven to school every day. Yes, I lived the somewhat sheltered life of a private school kid who lived two miles from school. So, every morning my brothers and I were driven to school pretty early in the morning so our parents could make it to work on time. We often ate breakfast in the cafeteria because getting up early is hard. I still kind of eat breakfast on the run before work.

I learned to love breakfast sandwiches.

Since we were there so early, there was not a lot of options on where to hang out. My school did not officially start until 8:10 am on the dot. The first class was after that but before that there was homeroom. Homeroom was often uneventful, just a holding period to make sure we were all there before we were shuttled off to our classes. Of course, since I was almost always early, I was there hanging outside the door of my math teacher’s classroom waiting to go in. I was joined by other early students as well. Our teacher must have had a busy morning of her own (I think she had a kid) almost every day because she would show up just as homeroom started. This would not do.

I basically did a trick you see private detectives do in the movies.

I saw that the school had built the door wrong but it turned out right for me and my compatriots. The space between the door and the jamb was far too wide. Almost every morning, I could wiggle a pencil between the jamb and the door and disengage the lock. We would then file into the room and make it look like we had been there for a while. Several times a teacher would pass by, get a confused look on their face and lean into the room. “How did this get open?” They would ask. We would all say something about another teacher taking pity on us and unlocking the door for us. They seemed to buy it every time.

Go ahead and cuff me.

So, my confessed “crime” is probably not actually a crime. If anything, I definitely broke the rules by regularly getting into a room without adult supervision or permission. Mostly, so I could be early for school and sit and doodle, write poetry or talk with friends in comfort. Of course, for over a decade later I presented this story just as I did in the opening paragraph. It was important to me that I could tell some people that I was capable of committing some light criminal activity. I thought it added to my cool factor but I should have realized that I had no cool factor. I am a super nerd and, as I have grown up, I have learned to accept that. If I wanted to have a few actual crimes under my belt I could have gone on graffiti runs in high school with some of my friends instead of getting into community theater.

I was more likely to be here than with my peers.

I never really was a bad kid. Not that my friends were bad kids. Sure, some of them did graffiti but it was out in the woods on abandoned properties from what I gather. Plus, high schoolers are a special kind of dumb. I never did any of that but I was a writer, not a visual artist. I also was not a partier and therefore I never tried marijuana or drank in high school. I never even stayed out late without permission. It does not make me a saint. It was something I was kind of embarrassed about for a while and I know it kept me from getting invited to parties. I was even not invited to cast parties for school plays probably because people assumed the answer would be no. The life of an introvert with a big imagination, I guess.

Tags: A to Z, A to Z Blogging Challenge, B, Breaking the Law, Personal