Day 2: An Essay

Yesterday and today I proctored the K55 midterm exam. There were three parts to this exam: listening, Reading and Writing.  For the writing part of the exam, the students were given two topics to choose between: Write a story about the biggest lie you have ever told and its consequences or Compare vacationing at the beach to vacationing in the mountain[s]. Proctoring is very boring so between glaring at students so they don’t talk to each other, I think I will also choose a topic to write on.

The topic I would like to write about is: the biggest lie I have ever told and its consequences.

Once upon a time I was a kindergartener. I was a very energetic and talkative kindergartener who liked to share my opinions on anything and everything as often as I could. Unfortunately, my teacher did not have the time to listen to all of my opinions and preferred that I stay quiet. I did not want to stay quiet, so we had a little bit of friction and since she had all of the authority, she won any time we had a difference about the appropriate time for me to voice all of my ideas. And I spent a lot of time in trouble.

Back in the day, when kindergarteners at Trinity were in trouble, they would have their names written on the board. Each day, your first infraction would result in your name on the board and you would get a check mark for each subsequent rule violation (a check mark usually resulted in missing recess time.)  If you got to three checkmarks…well let’s just say, you didn’t want to get to three.

During Kindergarten (and first and second and third grade) I was a master of reaching 2 check marks but never rarely ever pushing so far as to get third (though I never did get much recess time). However, for about 2-3 months during kindergarten, at the end of the day when my mother asked me if I got my name on the board that day, I would tell her no.

How my now overly sensitive conscious managed to hold up under that kind of a lie for so long, I am not really sure.  I guess it never occurred to me that perhaps my teacher might actually talk to my mother and clue her into what was going on. Lucky for me that never happened. I am sure my punishment would have been much worse if I hadn’t decided to come clean on my own.

Eventually I did figure out that continually lying to my mother was a bad idea. I decided to tell her during the middle of a large family function at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Kansas City area. (Perhaps I thought I would get a lighter punishment if I told her when other people were around.  She wouldn’t spank me in front of other people would she? (Not usually, but she is very patient woman, my mother.  She could wait until we got home.)) In any case, when I finally told her, I did not get a spanking. Instead I had to take a nap! In the middle of all the fun! My cousin Matt was younger than me, and he didn’t have to take a nap! Kindergartener Hanna was appalled. I would waaaay rather have a spanking and be done with it, Thank You. 23 year old Hanna thinks BEST PUNISHMENT EVER! I wish I could take a nap.

The End.