Yesterday I found myself dwelling on a strange memory from seventh grade.
I didn’t do homework for about two weeks because — and this is going to sound dumb — I had no pencils. And I either didn’t know how to or didn’t want to ask my parents to get pencils for me.
It actually reached a point where there was a quiz in my math class, and I found a nub of a pencil lead in my pencil case — just the lead, about a quarter inch long — and tried to do the quiz with that.
The teacher was absolutely horrified. She asked where my pencil was. I told her I didn’t have any. She drove me home from school one day because she wanted to have a meeting with my parents.
To this day, I do not understand why I felt I could not ask my parents for pencils.
I don’t know if I was too embarassed to ask or if I didn’t want to bother them.
It’s possible it never even occurred to me that I could ask for pencils.
What the hell was wrong with me? 🙁