Being a preteen girl is the literal worst. Such much awkwardness, so many feelings, so much insecurity, even more feelings. And the rare teenage girls that aren’t awkward and dorky are super mean. It’s just the pits.
Especially for this gal:
Oh, bless my poor 12-year-old heart.
And bless the hearts of every person who had the misfortune of attending this absolutely terrible middle school production of Pirates of Penzance. If I could go back in time and have the opportunity to see myself in this play, I would light the middle school auditorium on fire and consider myself a time traveling hero.
Picture, if you will, that chubby and braces-wearing 12 year old, in the first few weeks at a brand new school. Plucked from her childhood home in Georgia, and transplanted to Colorado in 7th grade. I am certain that if I do not make it to heaven, I will be sent to be forever tormented in this exact situation, eternally damned to be the awkward new kid at middle school.
So there I am, just minding my own business and alternating between desperately wanting to be popular and desperately trying to blend myself into the wall, wanting no one to ever notice me, ever. Fate had a funny way of making neither of these wishes come true, in one fell swoop.
For reasons I cannot possibly fathom, I was taking a drama class at my new school. Why would they offer a drama class to preteen girls? They’ve got it on lock, people. I motion for a new middle school class, called “How To Not Cry Every Time You Feel Feelings”. I would attend that class now. Back to drama class. I was in a skit where I was playing the role of a mechanic. We were encouraged to bring props for our skits. I brought along my little brother’s pretend tool set, in a black lego box.
This is the box I was carrying, in black. And it had a strip of masking tape that said “REICHMAN” on the back.
And these are the kind of tools I mean. They would buzz and rattle when you turned them on.
So there I am, at my locker before class with this lego briefcase full of power tools. And it won’t fit in my locker. What is a terrified and awkward girl to do? Class was about to start, and my drama classroom was clear across the school. I couldn’t very well bring the giant thing with me all morning until my drama class that afternoon. What if someone NOTICED and made fun of me and the news later reported “Girl spotted with weird briefcase at middle school: Everyone laughed; and now she will definitely never have a boyfriend.” Instead, I elected to drop it off with my math teacher, because I had her class before drama. I walked into the classroom and couldn’t find my teacher. But the bell was about to ring and I had to get to my first class. I mumbled something in the general direction of the students milling about the classroom, asking them to tell the teacher it was mine for a class and I was leaving it there.
Confident that I had dodged certain social disaster, I went on my merry way to my class. A few minutes into class, the fire alarm goes off. We all trot out to the usual fire drill spot. But the teachers urge us farther from the building, until we are clear against the back fence of the fields behind the school. Teachers nervously shuffled around, whispering and making phone calls, and the brilliant middle school detectives among us deduced that maybe there was a real life fire. A fire truck pulled up to the school, and the rumors intensified. A few police cars followed closely behind, and the rumor mill exploded. My school was a K-8, so the field was swarming with curious middle schoolers and terrified elementary schoolers; the air buzzing with nervous excitement. A bomb squad car entered the parking lot, and uniformed men with shields and helmets spilled out of the van. I watched it all with only vague curiosity, mostly happy to be missing science class, until a few words from the buzzing crowd caught my ears.
“A bomb.”
“In the school.”
“A black box.”
“A shaking black box”
.
.
.
“In the math classroom”
My stomach dropped into the bottom of my shoes. A black vibrating box. In the math classroom. No… It couldn’t be. How would the tools have turned on? I tried to ease my frantic conscience by reminding myself that I told the kids in that classroom what it was, and surely they told my teacher, so this must be an unrelated incident. And besides, my name was written on the box on a piece of masking tape…
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I heard “Will Amy Reichman please come down to the principal’s office?” crackle over the P.A. system. I felt like a prisoner being marched to the gallows, walking to a chorus of “Ooooooo”s and “she’s in trouble”s emanating from the harsh crowd of prepubescent onlookers.
Dragging me by the wrist like a misbehaving toddler, the principal and assorted other scary men escorted me to the principal’s office, where they all sat and stared at me with crossed arms and furrowed brows. I stared intently at the floor, hoping desperately for the carpet to rise up and swallow me whole. The superintendent of the school district finally spoke: “So, do you think this is funny?” I was not expecting this question at all, and decided my best course of action was to continue to stare at the floor. “Is this your idea of a funny prank? Leaving a box of shaking tools on your teacher’s desk, in a black box to look like a bomb?” I stared, dumbfounded, and began to cry. He launched into what can only be described as the scolding of a lifetime, detailing exactly why what I had done was so terrible, and all of the things that could happen to me now that I had planted a fake bomb in my school. He tossed around words like “expelled” and “counseling” and I sat there in terror, tears streaming down my face. I was too scared to even point out that it was all a huge misunderstanding. I just sat there; crying and imagining my fate in juvie. The thought of spending my remaining teen years in an orange jumper was beyond my capacity for grief and fear.
After what felt like hours of this, the door burst open, and my hero appeared in the form of a guidance counselor. This lady came in and absolutely threw it down. She ripped into the principal, telling him off for being such a jerk, and correctly stating that there was no way I did this on purpose and had he ever considered asking me how my box ended up in the math teacher’s room? The principal sat there in the wake of the veritable tongue lashing and begrudgingly asked me how my tool box ended up in the math classroom.
With heaving sobs and scattered breath, I told the whole story. My drama teacher was called in and had to show the script that proved I was really playing a mechanic in class that day. The principal skulked off with his tail between his legs and muttered something about me being really lucky. I spent the rest of the day hiding out in the gracious guidance counselor’s office. She let me stay there all day, drinking hot chocolate and trying to recover from the humiliation that I’d just endured. And I tell you what, if it were up to me, that single event would get that woman a ticket straight to heaven. A literal angel in the depths of purgatory, this blessed middle school counselor.
At the end of the day, all of the kids were sent home with letters explaining the bomb incident. There was an article in the paper about the bomb scare and it was all anyone could talk about for the next month. But it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. Sure, there were some who called me Amy Bin Laden, but there were others who high-fived me on getting them out half the day of school. I wasn’t invisible anymore, and I still wasn’t popular, but I was infamous. And I liked it, just a little.
My mom snipped the article out of the paper, and I think she still has it somewhere. Over the years the story has morphed from a traumatic event to a hilarious misunderstanding, and I can finally tell the story without blushing all the way up to my ears and wanting to find a rock to live under for the rest of my life.
These stories make me laugh/cry! Middle school was literally the WORST. Luckily I had one friend, but I was so awkward. I wish I had this cool story to tell. Also, you were always the coolest in my eyes.
I absolutely love this!! I was also the new kid in middle school but your story puts mine to shame!!!
Oh my goodness!!! I totally remember that day! I’m so sorry you had to go through that. The principle was an absolute jerk! My family had terrible experience with principle that year too.
I’m just curious, did you ever get to do the skit? Lol
Love you!!