Eighth grade. Burkholder Junior High. 1983-84. That’s a long time ago. It’s so long ago, Michael Jackson hadn’t become a freak yet.
Time has smoothed out most of my memories and the only thing I remember about that year, besides being generally miserable, is I didn’t have breasts yet and everyone else seemed to, I didn’t go see Van Halen in concert and everyone else seemed to and I didn’t have a Flashdance shirt and everyone else did.
I also remember getting caught changing the grades on my report card because my name wasn’t in the newspaper.
I’ve always been a lazy student and was able to get by because I still got good grades. That all changed in Eighth grade. A few weeks before the first quarter report card came out, I discovered I had three C’s. I couldn’t have C’s! I wasn’t a C student! How was I going to tell my mother?
One afternoon, I somehow got the courage to tell her about one class to gauge her reaction. Would I be killed, seriously maimed or just not spoken to for a very long time?
She was. . . shall we say. . . not pleased.
After, I knew the smart move would have been to tell her about all three C’s at the same time rather than drag out the torture. I also knew there was no way in hell I could tell her about the remaining classes.
Being a creative girl, the answer presented itself clearly. All I needed to do was to change the grades.
In those days, the report card was given to us on a flimsy bit of paper and the grades were printed with a light dot matrix. I took a pencil and lightly ran it over all of the lines on the entire report. The C’s became B’s.
My death was avoided.
How my parents didn’t see the report card wasn’t sound, I don’t know. Foolish trust? I was a ridiculously good kid. It bought me some currency.
You would imagine that I buckled down and made sure my grades went up. That would have been the smart move. The next quarter, I earned C’s in the same three classes and I decided to change all three C’s to B’s this time. The problem was if this were my actual report card, I would have been on the honor roll.
I knew my mom. She would be telling my grandparents, the neighbors and random strangers in bathrooms that I was on the honor roll. The accomplishment of your children was serious currency. This in itself would not pose a problem. The problem was where we lived.
Henderson is a small town just outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, Las Vegas sprawl bleeds into Henderson, but in the 1980’s city lines were much more distinct. It was like living in a small town with one Catholic Church, one high school, one junior high, one elementary school and one little local paper called The Henderson Home News. The HHN would print such note worthy articles about the turnout at the rodeo, the minutes of the American Legion and Burkholder Junior High’s Honor Roll students.
For weeks after the second forged report card, I grabbed the paper and scanned it for the honor roll. It wasn’t there. I started to breath a bit easier. I had gotten away with it.
One morning, my sister and I were running a bit late and my mom drove us to school. I was in the front passenger seat and there on the floor was the latest edition of The Henderson Home News. I thought about trying to take it with me when I got out of the car but I didn’t see how I could do it without getting caught and having to explain why I wanted it. I ran the odds in my head. What was the likelihood that the article detailing the honor roll students was in this paper?
I knew I was seven out when I was called out of my first class to go to the office. The councilor sat me in a corner. I can’t remember his name, but I remember we saw him and his family at Mass each Sunday.
“Nicole. Do you know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“Your mother called this morning–”
Fuck.
“—and she wanted to know why your name wasn’t on the list of honor roll students printed in the paper. So we pulled your report card—“
Fuckidty-fuck.
“–and told her your grades and it was a complete surprise to her. Do you have any idea why that is?”
I did what any reasonable person would do. Deny, deny, deny, deny. I kept that up for a good hour until my mother showed up.
Not a good scene.
Later at home she told me what really upset her was all this time I had been taking communion while I had been living this lie. I suspect that this was the beginning of my leaving the Catholic Church, but that’s another story altogether.
The next year, my freshman year in High School when I received my first report card, I earned five A’s and one D. The D was in Math. I would be a liar if I didn’t say there was a part of me that didn’t want to try out my art skills on that D but I didn’t.
It was a good thing, because my High School Councilor called my house after seeing the report card. Five A’s and a D was a bit of a red flag and he wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem.
My mom and I told him no. I just really sucked at Math.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
What Nicole also doesn’t know is that this made her so much more human to me.
Listen-
She was the BEST
Really good baby.
I would ask her something and she would do it. Darn she was reading by two. In fact if I did have to give her a restriction it had to be taking away her books.
She did refuse to learn her times tables. I mean refused….
Why didn’t we get a tutor in math? Especially in High School. I just don’t know. But I found out about that grade was interesting. Her father & I were at El Toritos having lunch. She called and told me there. How do you get mad at all A’s - I sucked at math too. I still don’t think the restriction we came up with was the right one. One of my many many mistakes.