Story of a 5th Grader Got Away with it 40 Years Later Kool-Aid and Jack
I woke up this morning and started my morning ritual of getting my cup of coffee and then head to the bathroom to take a dump. As I am sitting on the toilet I hear my wife in the other bathroom laughing her ass off. After we both finished our visits to the bathroom, we were sitting at the kitchen counter and I asked her what she was laughing about. She said she saw a posting on facebook and then she shared it with me.
To give you the full effect, I have to give you the back story. So here we go. It was the mid-late 70’s and I was in grade school, 5th grade. I think it was 1977 or 1978. Normal day was eating breakfast at the table, going to school, rushing home to catch the Little Rascals, Three Stooges, or an After School Special on ABC, doing homework, then going out to play until it was dinner time.
I was a Catholic school boy with about 30 in the class. Overall we were very close knit, but if there was friction, then you felt it. So if the girls did something annoying the boys would distant themselves from them.
Well for all of you that remember the “Little Rascals”, in a few episodes they had the “He-Man Woman’s Hater Club”. My two best friends at the time formed a little group modeled after them. We would hang out after school and just talk about stuff, (don’t really remember the specifics), but it was set-up to just do guy things. When we hung out we would just stay on the school grounds. There was a spot between a carport and the Nuns’ convent where we would gather.
Well one day we came up with this idea that we would bring snacks the next day to have during our next meeting. We were all suppose to bring something, so I volunteered to bring drinks. I went home that night and saw there was nothing so I figured I would stop by the store and get something for the meeting. I figured I would bring Kool-Aid. So before I went to sleep I got an empty two liter bottle, (made out of glass those days), so I could set it up and just buy the Kool-aid and sugar in the morning to just poor into it. (Kool-Aid only came in small packages back then so you had to add your own sugar). I found an empty bottle in a cabinet that my Dad kept liquor in for guests when they came over. Neither of my parents drank. So when I got the bottle, I washed it out and poured water into it. As a kid whenever I watched TV and someone had a drink, they always seemed so happy, so I took a bottle of whiskey and added it to the water. Don’t really remember how much.
The next day I hauled this heavy-ass bottle in my book-bag, stopped by the grocery store and mixed up my concoction before I got to school. When I got to school I put it in my cubby in the classroom. When lunch time came around, one of the girls saw the bottle of punch and asked me what it was for. I told her it was for after school. Then she told someone and so on an so on. So for lunch my friends just brought out what they had and we dessert after lunch.
A few minutes after eating lunch is usually playtime, but not this time. There were kids sprawled out in the carport and on the playground. The funny part was I never got to taste my own Kool-Aid. At this time the Nuns out on yard duty started to ask the different kids what was wrong. After lunch the Principal came to the classroom to investigate. She asked who brought it to school. I raised my hand. She then went on to ask who drank the Kool-Aid. So they raised their hands. Well the punishment was… Everyone who drank Kool-Aid got suspended for 1 day. I received a one week suspension, with my fate to be determined whether or not I would be allowed to go back to school. One thing that really sucked was one of the girls admitting to sniffing the cap of the bottle after she saw kids sprawled out all over the place and she got a one day suspension. Out of 30 kids, 20 did not show up to school the next day.
Before the week suspension was over, my parents were notified that I would be allowed to go back. With that said it was a pretty quiet 2 week upon my return.
Fast forward to this morning, my showed me what she was laughing about. There was a post on facebook that had a picture of our class in 5th grade from an old classmate who was just trying to touch back with old faces.
In one of the replies, it stated “Remember 5th grade during lunch when a bunch of us got sick, I think that punch had something in it. Didn’t John and Bob bring that punch?”
Well for now, 40 years later, at least in her eyes, it was not my fault.
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