Trois

Something you have to forgive yourself for

A problem I've had my whole life is doing things in excess. That's why I got as overweight as I did. Conversely, I think that's why I lost a lot of that weight as fast as I did. When I start playing "Angry Birds" on my phone, I get so wrapped up in it that unless I consciously make myself stop, I would play for hours. I suppose you'd call it an "addictive personality". I guess it's a good thing I don't really like to drink, and I've never done drugs. If that were the case, I could put myself in a world of trouble.

WARNING, what comes next is ridiculously corny, and I feel stupid even talking about it, but it's something I have never really forgotten about

Specifically, one thing that comes to mind is my behavior through the 5th and 6th grade. I became friends with two brothers whose names were Ricardos and Decarlos (no joke). One day, we decided to skip a class together. We roamed the halls and found what we thought was the most magical place in the entire school. It appeared to be a room full of confiscated toys. We played in there for a while. We played destructively. There were glass things in the room. We broke them. There were G.I. Joe toys. We took them. After we felt a sufficient amount of time had passed, we walked back up to our rooms and continued our day like nothing had ever happened.

The next day, we did it again during a different class (you know, so our teachers wouldn't be suspicious at our missing two days in a row...'cause we were brilliant). This led to skipping classes more often. Then, because of that excessive behavior I mentioned earlier, I took it a step further. We had been stealing toys out of that room for a while. I then took it upon myself to start my own little crime spree. I started stealing pencils and other random, useless stuff out of teachers' rooms. Once I snuck into the PE teacher's office and stole an entire box of candy bars. This went on from the second half of my 5th grade year through about the first half of 6th grade. I would skip school assemblies and rummage through my classmates' stuff, stealing a coke here and a Trapper Keeper folder there. Once I stole a Salt N Pepa tape, just because it was there, and I could.

For some reason, I never officially got caught. I'll never understand what actually happened, but it was brought to my attention years later that my parents knew about it. Or, at least, they knew about the skipping of classes. I'm sure a teacher called and told them about it. I was never confronted about it though, and for a number of years - I guess always, actually - I was just off the hook for it. My parents had other problems to deal with me about, I guess. Around that time was when I stopped caring about school work or grades (a bad habit that lasted right up until I graduated). I'll never know why, but I never got busted for it.

On top of that, I was mean. I had my friends (we were all losers), and we were rude to the popular kids. There was no real reason...they weren't mean to us. They weren't stuck-up, snobby popular kids. Actually, quite the opposite was true. They were nice. For some reason, though, I was a jerk to most of them.

In general, I was just an all-around gigantic a-hole. I had no justification why this was the case, but I was. It wasn't until high school that I socially balanced myself out. I think that may be a reason why I would classify myself a nice guy now. Maybe it's because I have been a not-so-nice guy before, and I know how stupid those guys are.

Still, to this day, I occasionally think about the way I was back then, and even though it had no lasting negative impact myself (or probably anyone else I came in contact with), I still regret it.