My Childhood Drug Overdose

I'm back. Loyal readers (both of you) will be delighted to see I’m taking the blog in a different direction. Topics are not limited to music but as you both know my musical obsession will surface anyway. My hateful nature remains undiminished but I feel that slinging insults on the current crop of musical artists is too easy. It's like pushing your boyfriend down a flight of stairs- Sure it's fun, but there’s no challenge.

This morning I read another blog where the author shared a sweet childhood anecdote complete with both a hearty moral lesson and the mention of a tiny kitten. I’m not wild about reading mundane details of people’s boring lives or learning any sort of moral lesson, but if that asshole can do it then certainly this asshole can too. So, here goes.

I was a bit of a challenging child; my genius was often overlooked due to a surly nature and generally bad attitude. It was hard to play well with others when I knew I was smarter than everyone else. The fundamental problem of a child genius is we are not easily entertained and most of our little escapades stem from sheer boredom. Boredom was a key factor in the following incident, but I will always contend that if my teachers had done a better job of keeping me mentally stimulated the event in question would have never occurred. And there was also the television factor, but we’ll get to that later.

My preschool class was composed of 4-year-old idiots. I was cognizant of this even though I, too, was also 4. My classroom was composed of children who found amusement spinning in circles until either a fall and/or regurgitation resulted. I could read by the age of 2: self-imposed dizziness didn’t do it for me.

I believe my teacher was named Mrs. Earl. Interestingly, M had been in her class four years prior so it's safe to assume that woman was already damaged goods. M also bears the same burden of genius.

The following event is entirely true and for any non-believers I will be glad to supply my mother's email address so she can verify the validity of the story. I will warn you, however, that having me as her child has left her a broken and bitter woman and denying events of my childhood is her particular coping mechanism of choice to survive the trauma she endured raising me.

Act 1

Scene 1

(A typical preschool classroom. A darling, flaxen-haired child (FHC) with stunning green eyes approaches her unfortunate teacher, Mrs. Earl.)

FHC: Mrs. Earl, I just swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol that I found at home. I also gave some to other kids.

(Mrs. Earl gets panic-stricken look on face.)

Mrs. Earl: You did what? How many did you swallow? Who did you give them to? Let me see the bottle.

(FHC produces an empty bottle from her red corduroy pants, which should be noted, were cinched with a very festive multi-colored Rainbow Brite belt with a sporty, magnetic buckle. Apparently, FHC's mother suffered under the delusion that morning that she was dressing her child for a day at clown school. FHC fails to mention that the bottle was found already empty in the trashcan earlier that morning. FHC fails to mention her penchant for rummaging through household refuse receptacles. FHC fails to mention this fact to a number of people for many, many years. Mrs. Earl fails to notice smirk discreetly creeping across FHC's face.)

Mrs. Earl: Oh my goodness! You're going to the principal’s office. We're calling your mother and poison control. March!

Scene 2

(Principal’s office. FHC is perched on a child-sized plastic chair and refuses to answer questions during the ensuing interrogation. It becomes obvious the principal is not a mother, herself as there was no use of sodium amytal or application of the techniques of sleep deprivation or water boarding.)

She tried to call my bluff.

Principal: I'm calling your mother.

FHC: *silence*

Principal: I mean it. I'm calling her right now.

She lifted the phone and her fingers hovered menacingly over the keypad in case I didn’t understand how the phone worked.

It was a nice touch. She must have had some doubts about my story or she would have already called 911. She had the misguided idea that I might break.

Principal: I’m dialing the number right now.

FHC: *silence*

We'll skip ahead in the story and assume the reader can piece together how the office exchange continued. Both Poison Control and my mother received a call. A weaker person would have cracked and admitted the truth, especially after maternal forces were summoned, but she underestimated my inherent assyness.

I'm assuming the good people at Poison Control said something to the effect that if I had, in fact, swallowed an entire 250 count bottle of Tylenol I would probably be dead by now or at the very least foaming at the mouth and rolling around on the floor in a pool of my bodily fluids.

(Enter FHC's harried, frantic mother.)

Mother: Are you ok? What happened? What possessed you to do something like that?

I was her first-born child so my mother was still pretty new to the whole mother-bit and lived in perpetual fear for my safety. My sister came along a few years later and by that time she was an old hand and had learned it best to let her genius child and semi-genius child bear the consequences of their own dumbass actions. She frequently tested how much we learned and there were many Christmases we received books of matches as gifts in our stockings. She reasoned if we were dumb enough to light ourselves on fire than we deserved it- She had taught us better.

(FHC’s mother is losing her patience.)

Mother: Answer me!

FHC: *silence*

She may or may not have started shaking me at this point, that detail remains a rather heated source of debate to this day. (I told you she was a bitter woman.) I assure you that if I had known the term, "shaking baby syndrome," I wouldn't have hesitated to summon the proper authorities and have her carted off to a Home for Horrible Parents.

Mother: Wh-what? You gave it to the other children?

She had just been informed by Principal Yapper her child was not only a user, but also a preschool drug pusher. I slipped for a brief second and she saw my look of amusement. She had developed a well-trained eye for watching for that sort of thing with me.

Mother: That's it. We're going to the hospital.

She was good.

All I had wanted was to create a little amusing drama and sitting in a hospital ER for hours would have put a real damper on the day. It also meant I wouldn't be home in time to watch My Favorite Martian. You see my other motivation was the television. I went to preschool 3 days a week and for 3 days my television habits were horribly disrupted. I thought if she saw me sick and/or near death from the Tylenol she would take me home and I could retire to the living room sofa for an afternoon of TV watching to my heart's content. The fly in the ointment was for some reason it hadn’t dawned on me that my impending death might lead to a visit to a medical facility. (Even a child prodigy has her off days.) The hospital was worse than preschool.

I acquiesced.

FHC: Ok. I made it up. I didn't swallow Tylenol.

The principal nearly lost it, although though you would have thought the woman would have been relieved to learn she wasn't going to have a roomful of dead preschoolers on her hands. Now, she looked like she wanted to shake me.

That's pretty much the gist of the story. They don't usually suspend preschoolers so I returned later that week. The principal didn’t forget the incident and I feel certain it was she who sent a letter to my future elementary school warning of my arrival.

Later, my mother swatted at my hindquarters with her weapon of choice, the plastic egg turner, and sentenced me to my room for 3 days of solitary confinement. I didn’t mind this because this meant I was left to myself and I could use the time productively to refine my plan for world domination. The real bitch was after all that I ended up missing My Favorite Martian anyway. So I believe the life lesson we can glean from this moving story is that you should really consider the consequences of stirring up trouble to entertain yourself- it might make you miss your favorite TV show.