A Girl...

Simon Says - "The Theft of the Pink Pearl, Why I Felt Bad About It, and Why I'm OK Now"

I was in 4th grade. I had moved to California the summer before 2nd grade, and had gone to one elementary for two years, and was now again at a new school. This was my third elementary school in 4 years. I didn't like this new school, and I never really bothered to even learn the names of my classmates, for the most part. This was not a good year. Nothing went well. I didn't like my teacher, I didn't like the other kids, I didn't like the school, I didn't like the books we read (except for the one about the hound dogs and the raccoon hunting), I didn't like the principal, I didn't like my classroom... you name it. So anyway...

In those days, a real prized posession was a pink eraser, the kind that was soft and pink in the hand, rectangular from the top and trapezoidal from the side. They were called Pink Pearls. They were expensive, and they were fun to use, and to clean them, all you had to do was run them back and forth along that industrial style elementary school carpet, and they were pink again. They were much nicer than a Pink Pet, which was made of hard, non-pliable rubber, and smudged pink residue all over the page. Nope, a Pink Pearl was the top of the heap.

So I found a pink pearl on the floor of my classroom one day. This was like finding treasure, you see. I was excited to have such good luck. My mom never bought me a pink pearl (I assume now that she would've bought me one had I asked...), and now there was a pink pearl in my hand. Joy, truly.

Until Corbin Gray (not his real name, so don't bother Googling him) saw me with it the next day, and recognized it. And of course, as it was his, Corbin wanted it back. He saw that I had it, and he asked me to give it back. It's funny... at the age of 30, I am astounded that 4th graders can tell their erasers apart from 40 feet, but is is so true. They can. They are like mother penguins, able to pick their otherwise identical penguin chicks out of a crowd without any doubt or hesitation.

I ought to have immediately said, "sure, I found the eraser, and it is obviously the one you lost, and you may have it back," but I didn't. Rather, I told him it was mine, and he must have made a mistake. I knew I was lying, but I was so happy to have that pink pearl, that I lied before I even really thought about it.

Now, the thing about lying is, once you have come up with a spur-of-the-moment lie, you have to stick to it, or you have to admit that you were lying. If you admit that you were lying, then you are screwed. So there I was, knowing I was lying, and I was arguing with Corbin Gray about the eraser that I knew in my heart was his. "It is mine; my mom bought it for me." We both had the same line...

It was not much later that Corbin, KNOWING that he was getting screwed, got the teacher, and told her that I had stolen the eraser. She confronted me about it, and I stuck with my story... I told her it was mine, and I that my mom had bought it for me. This was getting deeper than I had expected. I thought it would blow over, but now an adult was involved. No matter, though, since Corbin was a "bad kid" and no one trusted him, I was sure. He was a little bit out of control, got in trouble a lot... no one would believe him over me. Of course not, I was a good kid. No one would think that I would lie about something as important as a Pink Pearl eraser.

Unfortunately, Corbin wasn't the only one that recognized the eraser. So did about five other kids that sat near him. They all recognized that stupid eraser.

So there I was, the new kid in the class. I had a stolen eraser, a lie about its origin, and a teacher and a pack of mother penguins staring me down. I had no choice but to hand over the eraser to Corbin Gray. He had been wronged by me, and had won in the end, as justice would dictate. But even after I handed it over, I still insisted that it was mine, in an attempt to save face.

I spent less than one whole year at that crappy school. By the time I left, I had a few friends (sort of) and I was at least able to name half of my classmates, but I was happy to go.

Five years later, Corbin and I went to the same high school. I doubt he remembered me. If he did, he never mentioned it to me, and I never mentioned it to him. Corbin got in trouble a lot in high school, and was a total asshole as far as I was concerned. Once I knew the 15 to 18 year old Corbin, once I watched a janitor clean up Corbin's defication from the locker room floor, once I saw Corbin intentionally spike an opponent in the head with his soccer cleats, I stopped feeling bad for lying about the eraser.

You will look for deeper meaning in it, some sort of symbolism. No, I tell you, there is no deeper meaning, no symbolism, no relevance. It is just a story about what happened to me in fourth grade.