fiction:: 4th GRADE REALLY SUCKED, pt. 11

By the end of the year almost everyone had their day. Even Anthony Mahoney who, with his prematurely hormonal buddies cheering him on, was able to turn his punishment into a sort of mini-Olympics, doing double the usual requirement for boys, at one point even one-handed. And then there was Sara Covey, Little Miss Gifted. By the time her turn was up, the whole class was itching for it. Finally, the untouchable, perpetual teacher's pet was getting it too.

You stopped feeling sorry for the other person; you just wanted them to go through what you had already went through. They were no better than you, so why not? And each day that someone got it for the first time, you felt a little less shitty about yourself. When an unlikely person got it - and not just the usual loser with a learning disability - it was a grand slam. You made sure to heckle extra loud. They were like prized prey: very elusive, but well worth the wait.

Two years later, in sixth grade, our arts and crafts teacher (read: gypsy earrings, Penelope Tree eyes), had us paint these cardboard tombstones for the annual Halloween party. My best friend, Shannon Dennehy, and I did these really elaborate ones for Miss Cunningham. One depicted her as dying of massive heart failure after looking in the mirror. Another had her crashing through her apartment floor, cracking her skull open, pieces of brains flying everywhere. We fixed it so that she was always buried in the hole created from her own fall. Willow Glens' Infamous Cunningham Landmark. The last line would always be something like: "Her remains shall feed the maggots of our Fine Republic for the next 200 years." Another one was: "R.I.P. -- Rotting In Public for Higher Education". Or simply: "As seen in Ripley's Believe It Or Not". On and on and on. Our knowledge that they'd never get past the censors did little to faze us. We churned those babies out like aluminum cans on a conveyor belt.

THE END.