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i was 9 years old when my next door neighbor showed me the delightful scent of a laundry detergent tab. she liked sniffing it and i couldn't agree more with her take. we didn't have that sort of thing in my house- mother was liquid. but we did have solid washing machine detergent, so i supplemented my new interest with that and toted around the solid detergent in my school bag- smelling it when i needed a bit of comfort, kind of like a blanky, which yes obviously i had one of those too. unfortuately, the little cube started to crack in my bag, covering everything, including my snacks, in weird soapy crumbs. i started to feel insecure about the whole thing, like is this kind of weird that i'm carrying solid detergent now to school? So, i put it in the trash. i walked there quietly, wrapped it up in a piece of paper and threw it away and went back to my seat. for some god forsaken reason, my teacher that day decided we should do a lesson on trash. so she emptied out the can on a table and went through everything that had been thrown away that day; apple cores, pencil sharpenings, and unfortunately, my mother's solid dish washing machine detergent. i wish i was kidding.
i agonized watching the table, the detergent like a lightning bolt, the only thing i'm looking at, seizing every ounce of my attention. hoping to god she just misses it. she doesn't. in fact she picks it up, sniffs it. starts saying "WHAT IS THIS" and saying "WHO THREW THIS AWAY" and the whole time im silent. sitting there in fear. i'm sweating. no one says anything. everyone is looking at each other and i continue to omit, an important distinction- not a lie. it's stressful, it feels like it lasts an eternity. she's looking at us all in the eyes wondering who is gonna crack. she will not let it go. continually, at least in my memory, WAILING. and if there was one thing i was sure of, it was that if i did confess, my new name would be soapy or something idk lol
so i sat there. let my back cover in sweat. poker face. poker face mary they could have called me. she finally relented. we moved on. i was free. but i will never forget my first mass omission (again not a lie.......... )
weirdly the teacher later died of slurping on a tide pod on one of those challenges in 2018
ok that bit isnt true
May 28, 2025
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We had an AP biology teacher who according to rumor and anecdotal observation over the years would always seat girls with the biggest chests in front (you know I was seated in the veryyyy back).
As a vegetarian I conscientiously objected to dissecting squids and he said that was fine but that he would give me an alternate activity which is standard practice. The alternate activity was that he had me clean the squid guts off of the lab tables (which were also our desks) as people sat there and had them watch in silence. He gave live commentary as I cleaned and I eventually burst into tears from the embarrassment. People were actually so sweet and came up to me later and apologized that I had to go through that and a petition went around to get him fired.
The petition was unsuccessful but he was later fired because he got caught WATCHING PORNOGRAPHY ON HIS SCHOOL COMPUTER DURING SCHOOL HOURSSSSS!!!!!!
Apr 26, 2024
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in retrospect this isn’t that big of a deal but i went to a very small boarding school of about 500 girls in a very small, conservative town where literally nothing happens and everyone knows everything about EVERYONE, so this was a big thing for US, but might not be for many.
so there was this new girl that joined the school in grade 9, and she joined my homeroom class and was pretty nice. she was a little off beat, but for the most part everything seemed pretty okay and normal. we ironically started calling each other “best friend” until we eventually became friends.
she was a big spender. she’s buying at the tuckshop at break, after school, before school like every day. and mind you, we are boarders, most of us get a small allowance every month to go to town, to order food, buy essentials etc. i know the allowance of most people was not enough to buy from the tuckshop everyday. and i just thought damn, this girl must be rich rich.
people quickly picked up on this though, and started asking her for money at the tuckshop. myself included. from grades 9-11 i used to be a tuckshop hustler (a damn good one at that!), like ask everyone for R2 until i had enough to buy a meal. but this girl would either just buy you the meal or just give out R10, R20, R50. and this id a lot of money! when business was slow i’d settle for a packet of chips and juice and that would come to about R8, the cheapest meal was a chip roll and that was about R13 and the most expensive was a wrap which was around R25 (if i remember correctly.)
so she’d just give out this money to MULTIPLE people throughout the day. i genuinely thought she was a BALLER! she had told me that she was switching schools, i don’t remember why, but she ended up leaving later that year. it was only AFTER she left that i heard that she used to steal people’s money.
so in her hostel they used to have sleepovers on the weekends and every week it was a different room. she would (allegedly) go to these sleepovers and steal people’s money. i also found out that my class had chipped in money to buy me a gift, (birthdays were very big at our school and i had the first birthday in my class). turns out she stole it too!
this is very underwhelming, but like just imagine this playing out like in an episode of derry girls yk
Apr 28, 2024
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i was in 6th grade and i just started a new school bc i moved around a lot. i struggled tying my shoes up until high school (neurodivergence related i’m sure) and so i would usually ask my friends to tie them nice and tight for me (i honestly am still kind of ass at tying my shoes tight now). bc i just started a new school, i had no friends to tie my shoes. i literally just let those laces fly didn’t tuck them in or anything.
on the first beep of the pacer test i tripped, fell and slid on my stomach for what felt like forever across the gym. big ass gym. everyone got quiet. 6th, 7th and 8th graders were all there. bc of this i had to admit that i couldn’t really tie my shoes bc a gym teacher tied them for me :/ mortifying all around.
i happened to stay at this school in 7th grade and i remember at least three times when i would meet a kid for the first time and they’d be like “oh you were that girl who slid across the gym during the pacer test”. to make matters worse, i also didn’t get to retake my test and failed gym that day. mind you they had to restart the test on account of my distraction.
i know ive done a plethora of embarrassing things that make me scream to think about so ive blocked most of them out of my memory. this stands out the most at the moment.
May 14, 2025
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as i sit on the eve of my 32nd birthday, i'm not really too worn down about the actual age. it's more everything that's to come that stresses me out. feeling like i've worked hard for what we've always known to be the way we currently live, and knowing that each day we sleep walk into a future less and less like our past. i'm not against change, but i want some things in life to retain the promise of what we grew up with. i hope i can rid myself of everyday social media this year, hope i can only browse on my computer and not my phone and remember the days of logging into facebook on a fake android and it taking days to give you a single status update. how frustrating it was, and we didnt know it was bliss. maybe thats the lesson!!
3d ago
in what was a euphoric 5 miles on the lost coast trail, nepenthe was my only soundtrack.
until i ate shit and hobbled back on a second degree ankle sprain and questioned all my life choices lol
May 25, 2025