Late night confessions.

I couldn't sleep last night. It's probably because it was the first night in about a week that I had bypassed the melatonin chased with wine, or it could've been the 6-8 cans of Mountain Dew I consume daily to keep functioning. Or a combination of both. Probably both. Probably not healthy but whatever. At any rate, I couldn't sleep, and as A and Punky both slumbered peacefully (and, in Punky's case, flailingly and kickingly), I started overanalyzing everything in my life.

You ever get like that? Where the night just gets into your head? I do all the time and I start worrying about stupid shit that needs no more than a second thought. Last night my attention and paranoia shifted to the job interview of the job I really really want, and I started wondering if everything on my background check would come out okay. In all reality, I have no doubt it would, but what if those parking tickets I ignored in college and to this day haven't paid -- when I decided "FUCK the establishment, man!" and parked in designated professor spots right next to the building like every day -- stood between me and this dream job? Seriously, man, just what if?

And then, for some reason, I was just reminded of other times in the past, when I'd be 100% awake worrying about the totally mundane and pointless and inconsequential. Particularly in grade school, and then I remembered something I'd never told ANYONE. I stayed up for many a night terrified the school was going to call and tell my mother this, and after a good 15 years, I think it's time I came clean.

I went to the principal's office.

I was a good kid. I was your stereotypical teacher's pet/brown noser, it was obnoxious and it was an irritating personality trait of mine til I hit high school and decided to rebel. But in the meantime, in third grade, I was NOT the kind of kid that went to the principal's office. That
was for THOSE kids, but certainly not me.

Until one day, Tim Somethingorother (damned if I can remember his last name) and I got into a spit fight on the playground. It was all fun and games until he hocked a big, nasty, green, phlegmy loogie that, by a stroke of luck and a brush of fate, wound up in my mouth and across the side of my face. I was completely and utterly disgusted and ran to the playground monitor. I told her Tim had spit on me. End of story. No back story that may or may not have involved me spitting on him, too. Tim was promptly sent -- nay, escorted -- to the principal's office and one of the playground monitor's cronies (the "mentally challenged" kids from the high school) took me to get cleaned up.

An hour or two later I was summoned to the principal's office, where Big Scary Intimidating Principal With A Mustache (BSIPWAM) told me that Tim said I'd spit on him first. I think this is what BSIPWAM said. I don't really know, because I was in the midst of a total, complete meltdown. I was NOT a kid that went to the principal's office, and holy SHIT, was he going to call my mom? He's going to call my mom, I bet. And then... oh then. Ever see Mommy Dearest? That's what would be waiting for me at home. So I was a shaking, sobbing, snotting, hysterical hot mess.

Nothing more came from it, and looking back, I'm sure BSIPWAM recognized the ultimate effect just the summons would have on Goody Two-Shoes 9-Year-Old Prego. But I went home and was absolutely terrified the school was going to call my mom. Damned if I was going to tell her. Nuh-uh, no sir, I wasn't even going to poke that bear. So for nights, who even knows how many nights, I laid in bed (before I had a TV in my room to distract my thoughts), wondering if/when the school would call my mom and tell her what a wicked, horrible child I was, and then my mom would send me to the Christian school. And even at that age I thought religion was a horrible idea that was best to be avoided. Whenever the phone rang, I'd tense up and wait for my mom to come raging down the hall to my bedroom to punish me for my spitting indiscretions. (For some reason I thought that surely the school must be calling at 11 p.m.)

So there it is. I spit on Tim Whatshisname first. That still totally didn't warrant a huge freakin' LOOG in my mouth, but whatever. I have it off my chest now. If this were a movie, some transparent ghost-looking 9-Year-Old-Prego would be standing across from me with a smile on her face because I set her free. Be free, little one, your loogie secret is no longer standing between you and greatness.