Tuesday, March 5th, 1974

Mr. Blanchard today asked me if I had seen anyone around his desk. I couldn't lie so I told him about me and Dan. He said he wasn't mad. Just "Don't do it again...ever." Even so, it made me feel incredibly guilty for the entire rest of the day! Boy!

On my way downhill again. I'm no good in Volleyball in Gym, either.

And for the first time in ages, I had a lot of homework tonight so I didn't have time to watch TV at all. Not only that, I don't think I did it right! Man!

NOTES: What was this about, you ask? Welllll...ya see...I mean...well...Okay, here's the story. I had been the smartest kid in school all through grade school and also in the 7th and 8th grades, despite my being very unhappy then. This year, though, in 9th grade, there was another kid named Dan S. who was, quite frankly, smarter than me. Our English class coincided with our lunch period and neither Dan nor I ate lunch. We weren't friends. We were rivals. Mr. Blanchard (not his real name) trusted us to stay there but locked the room until lunch was over. Dan and I would often play chess. Other times, we'd read separately, either books from the room's little library or just reading ahead in our textbooks. On days when we had a quiz, we both knew we would ace it. We had gotten to a point where we considered ourselves above the rest of the students. The rules didn't apply to us, you see. So...we'd get into Mr. Blanchard's desk and doublecheck our answers! In advance! It wasn't technically cheating, you see, because we KNEW all the correct ones. Always. Yeah. Uh, huh. We rationalized it the best way we could but it was still wrong. We had adopted an elitist attitude and we got busted. We were lucky he didn't cut us down a grade in his class!


I can be pretty full of myself. Then and now. But I also burden myself with guilt more than just about anyone I've ever known. This incident did NOT sit well with me.