One problem occurred during every game of four square, when my knee socks puddled around my ankles.
I also worried that new teeth would never grow into the front of my smile.
But my biggest problem was a tall lady who wore pleated skirts, smelled like bath powder and had 11 black hairs under her nose.
Her eyes constantly caught me like the fly strip my dad hung by the porch.
“Sherri, why are you out of your seat again?”
“Sherri, your pencil is already sharp.”
“Sherri, go write your name on the board.”
But one day, instead of telling me to again write my name on the board so everyone in the world would know how bad I was, Mrs. Satan followed me to my desk.
First, her rat eyes inspected my art project. Then her bushy, grandpa-looking eyebrows met in the middle of her face.
“You cut the heads off every single president,” Mrs. Big Butt said.
I tried to look shocked that my desk was littered with paper heads.
Mrs. Moustache then spoke to our class while I hid the paper heads under my legs and thought about all the bad names I wanted to call her.
“Sherri made a bad choice,” Mrs. Trash Face said loudly. “She has to start over on her project. So you will miss recess until she finishes.”
What?
My classmates glared at me like I also stole chocolate pudding globs off their lunch trays.
Uh, hello, bad teacher. That art problem was truly an accident. Why would I do that on purpose?
Well anyway, I think my air head reputation began that day.
By sixth grade I finally had new teeth. But they were beaver teeth. So I lived life with my lips glued shut.
“Don’t you want to smile?” the lady asked on picture day.
Through pressed lips I mumbled, “I am smiling.”
I sounded like a bad ventriloquist, which made me laugh. But not enough to show my horse teeth.
I planned to marry Donny Osmond so Marie could be my BFF. But because Bobby Sherman was cuter, I wanted a family with him. I also had my eye on David Cassidy and Ringo Starr.
While those adolescent plans floated in my chest, my airhead reputation took on a life of its own.
By high school I was a walking mess. My locker constantly jammed; The home economics teacher hated my guts; and nearly every time I decided to ditch school for the day, the vice principal appeared like a Ninja.
“Were you trying to skip school?” he asked.
“No,” I said with my liar face in place. “I just needed some fresh air.” I then took a pretend whiff and returned to math class, where I was the worst student in the universe.
Obviously I never outgrew being an airhead. And that explains what happened yesterday when I ended up with a big bump on my head.
Innocently, I placed a pain patch on my bed, intending to somehow stick it to my right shoulder blade.
Aiming for the path, I then fell backward like a dead body.
Well my sock feet suddenly slipped. I lost my footing and slid off the bed. On the way to the floor my head kissed the corner of the dresser. Soon after that I discovered my pain patch was stuck in my hair. And I laughed until I cried.
Like 50 years ago, when I accidentally cut the heads off the American presidents, I made yet another accidental mess.
Thank goodness I learned years ago to laugh my way through my mishaps.