In 1988, I swiped the contents of my piggy bank (about $10) and plotted to sneak off school property at lunchtime with my friend, Nicole. Our plan was nothing extravagant: just buy as much Bubble Tape as possible, for whatever amount of money we were carrying between us that day. I don’t remember what Nicole brought to the table in the way of piggy bank contents, but she was definitely the brains behind the operation; she’d done this before, she told me, which made her all the more cool to eight-year old me.
As we walked away from the corner store, full of sweet loot, and turned the corner back into the schoolyard, my heart started beating hard against my chest. I could hear the pounding in my ears. I knew that, eventually, I’d come down from my cloud and realize there were consequences to what I had done – too many kids had seen us leave at lunchtime that day and there was no way my mom wasn’t going to find out, which, of course, she did. I felt so bad about the whole thing, I think it’s definitely a moment that left an impression of my young heart, for better or worse.
Amazing, the things that stick with us.
After that day, I never looked at my piggy bank the same way again, or Bubble Tape.
Mmmm bubble tape – yum! I remember cutting the afternoon with my friend in Jr High and so the school wouldn’t call our houses about us not being there, we called the school ourselves pretending to be our moms telling them that we had doctor’s appointments (or something dumb like that) – we got caught OF COURSE. We had to put away all the chairs from a whole-school assembly (i.e. detention). I can’t believe we were so stupid and actually thought that might work haha. It’s funny how you can look back at moments like that and be simultaneously embarrassed and amused by your own ignorance. In a weird way, I think life was more simple when we didn’t have the logic to analyze every little thing to death :)