I apologize in advance if this bores you to tears.
*****
At my elementary school, there was a girl named Donna. She was a very nice and polite girl, and very smart. Always reading a book, and had an excellent vocabulary. But she was not very popular. She was on the heavy side and had long, stringy blonde hair. The clothes she wore were obviously second hand, and the popular girls often made fun of her. The popular girls were always well dressed and had cool hair, and always brought the latest cool thing to school, like slap bracelets.(One of the popular girls brought a brand new video camera in once. It was absurd.) They could be really nasty at times, and I sometimes think about them and hope they grew up to be decent humans instead of the jerks that they were. (I almost called them twats right there, but stopped myself from doing so because calling a child a twat seems awfully mean and petty. A full grown adult though? Twats ahoy. Twat on, you crazy diamond.)
Anyway, despite her unpopularity, I liked Donna. She was a sweet person and I didn't really have any problems with her. We never hung out outside school though.
One day, in the 4th or 5th grade, we were all playing outside in the field for recess. I was walking around with the popular girls. We used to play a lot of chasing and tag games in younger grades, but when we got older, we were way too cool for that and opted to walk laps around the yard instead, following the fence line. The school was in a kind of rural part of Florida, and the fields were big and grassy with very few trees. So, like I said, I was walking the fence with the popular girls. I don't know why. Sometimes they were nice to me. Often, they were just mean. But I guess on that day they were being nice and I was walking with them. We saw Donna sitting at a picnic bench by herself. She was wearing a fancier dress than she normally wore, and white high heels. And she held a small purse by her side.
When we got close to her, we stopped and talked to her for a minute. I don't remember what we talked about. I do remember that the popular girls were making comments to her like, "Nice dress." But it wasn't in a sincere way. It was in that shitty snobby way that they spoke to people. Like she was so far beneath them. Since Donna and I were friends, I grabbed her purse in slow motion and said, "I'm going to steal your fancy purse!" And then immediately handed it back. We all kind of laughed and joked for a minute, and then I kept walking the fence line with those mean girls.
As recess was ending, I heard Donna explaining in a panicked voice to the teacher that her money was lost. That she just had it a few minutes ago, and now it was gone. And then the usual questions from the teacher: Where were you when you lost it? Who was around? What was going on? Every answer pointed directly to me and the popular girls. We were around Donna during recess. We were talking to her, and I was the one who grabbed her purse and joked that I was going to steal it. Donna was visibly upset and got misty eyed.
After recess, we were all called into the Principal's office. Donna's mom was there, waiting in the lobby, while Donna spoke privately to the Principal in her office. The four of us (the popular girls and me) sat down in the seats in the lobby. Donna's mom looked angry. She asked us, "Are you all friends?" We answered yes. Then she glared at us and said, "You're not going to get away with this. They're going to find that seven dollars and you're going to be in trouble." I replied to her, "I didn't take it! I like Donna."
I was scared shitless.
We didn't take Donna's money! She was my friend, and besides, I wouldn't steal money from someone anyway! That was just a crappy thing to do. But holy crap, man. We were terrified. We thought for sure it was going to be pinned on us and we'd get blamed for stealing money that we didn't take. It was maybe the most panicked I ever felt during elementary school.
In the end, nothing happened. I don't think Donna found her lost seven dollars, and none of us got in trouble for it because we didn't have it. But I think sometimes about her mom and the look she gave us. Like she just knew we were guilty, and she hated us for it. And I sometimes wonder what happened to Donna. I've never looked her up, even though there is no mystery for anything anymore, with the magic of Facebook. But I kind of want to keep the mystery, so I haven't looked her up.
*****
Were you ever accused of stealing something that you didn't when you were young? Tell me all of your deepest and darkest false accusations.
8 comments:
I grew up with lots of siblings, so we blamed each other often for lost money. It was always a very specific amount, like, "Someone stole my $17 that I had leftover from my birthday money that Grandpa gave me!"
Something that I've always felt bad about that I didn't do on purpose is when a neighbor girl went missing, and her mom came over looking for her. I told her she should look at the bottom of the pool. I sincerely thought maybe she had drowned in their pool, and I didn't understand why everyone was upset with me until a few years later. I guess it's nothing like your story because it wasn't a false accusation, but I cringe every time I think about it.
Oh my god! It's crazy how kids can say the absolute worst things and not understand why they upset people. I have a few of those moments too, and cringe when I think about what a dink I was at the time.
Oh, what a story! I felt the old familiar anxiety overcoming me as I read-- being a girl of that age was tough for me. Everyone was so petty, and I remember feeling completely blindsided by all of the drama in those years coming from other girls. Probably why I just hung out with my brother and his friends after 5th grade. I had one or two close girl friends, but the majority of my friends were boys. We climbed trees, played street hockey and football, and roller skated around the neighborhood trying to outdo each other with cool tricks (that kind of competition appealed to me so much more than the social competition).
I remember being accused by a 6th grade troublemaker (aka popular girl) of talking trash about another popular girl even though I had clearly had nothing to do with either of them. It was such a horrible experience, knowing that someone could say whatever they wanted about me and there was nothing I could do about it. I am SOOOOOOO glad I don't have to go through that again!
When I was maybe 7 my mom took us to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. She told us we could look around, and my sister and I took off for the toy aisle. I found these awesome stickers, they were dinosaurs, but they were puffy and glittery and cost 15 cents or something. I knew it wasn't a lot of money, but I also knew my mom could be touchy, so I didn't want to carry it over to her like I assumed she'd say yes. I also didn't want to put my amazing puffy dinosaur back into the sticker bin to never be found, so I slid it into my pocket and figured I would sneak away and put it back if Mom said no. She said yes and told me I could go get it...so I said, "Oh, it's right here!" and pulled it out of my pocket. Needless to say, I went home sticker-less and nothing I could do could convince my mother that if she hadn't said yes, I would have put it back. I got in so much trouble over the sticker in my pocket that I never intended to steal! If I told her now, she might believe me, but at 7, it just seemed a blatant attempt to get out of trouble. I still remember how helpless I felt and how confused I was over her crazy reaction!
We definitely had mean girl moments, but I feel like I was lucky in living in a small and progressive town. Smartness actually made you more popular in my school, and the 'popular' kids came in all shapes and sizes. I don't remember being falsely accused of anything, but I did once steel when I was around 5. I fell in with the wrong group in preschool :) and was pressured to steel 'something' to join this club that an older girl had formed. I took a rick-rack bracelet off a snoopy doll at a hallmark store while my mom was busy shopping. The salesgirl totally caught me and confronted me, saying the bracelet belonged to snoopy. I was mortified but my mother never even knew. The next day I brought a snickers bar to preschool and said I'd stolen it... much easier that way!
I also remember a lot of drama surrounding the popular crowd. Like they were a tiny tornado of drama that picked people up and tossed them about everywhere they went. What's with that? Why wasn't being popular and kind an option to them? For that reason, I am thankful that I was always kind of on the outside and never really considered cool.
I am not even kidding you, something similar to your story just unfolded with Julian in the store. But it ended instead with me being like, "DUDE. You can't put stuff into your pockets just to carry it through the store - you will get us all kicked out of the store and sent to jail."
Whoa. Your school sounds awesome. I think the school Julian goes to is sort of like that. The popular kids are just well liked and smart kids. Like, being popular isn't a negative thing there. Nobody is really super mean to anyone else. It's refreshing.
You were a real rebel in preschool! Ha!
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