I first became a vandal at the age of nine. I loved school from a young age and the 3rd grade in Mr. Goodman's class was no different. I also cherished my bathroom breaks. It probably had something to do with being an only child, used to more privacy - I needed my alone time. I remember distinctly standing before the big mirror on the wall in the bathroom. Everything had a bluish tint - the blue tiled floor and blue painted walls reflecting in the mirror. As a child, looking in the mirror was more entertaining - as one ages it becomes much more intense and often disheartening.
One day while in the bathroom stall, I noticed a loose screw in the bottom of the stall door. So naturally I loosened it more, twisting my fingers around the cold, greasy metal. I felt a great sense of accomplishment when the screw came off in my hand. The absence of the screw left a perfect little round hole in the blue painted door. I put the screw in my pocket and headed back to class.
This became a ritual, unscrewing one screw every time I took a trip to the bathroom by myself. I think my goal was to remove the door, or perhaps disassemble the whole lot of bathroom stalls. Wouldn't that be just splendid? On one particularly productive day I found I had unscrewed all of the screws which held the lock in place on the stall door. I tucked the lock in my shirt in order to get back to class and hide it in my desk. Later, when the class was divided into small groups for a project, I took my friends in my group to my desk to show them the treasure inside. I can't imagine now that little girls would be all that impressed by the stolen lock in my possession, but I must have at least gotten a few laughs which always pleased me. Little did I know that this sharing of my secret would lead to my ultimate downfall.
At lunch we always lined up in alphabetical order in the hallway to walk the 50 or so feet down to the Cafeteria. On one fateful day, I remember hearing Mr. Goodman's booming voice as he stood before the class with his hand in the air. "Does anybody know anything about THIS?" he yelled, red-faced, and I noticed the shiny metal in his raised hand. He was avoiding looking directly at me, but of course I instantly burst into tears, sobbing into my hands, uttering how sorry I was and that I had no idea why I had done it.
Clara Bonaparte was the classmate who told on me, my friends let me know. She was a goody-two-shoes with two actors for parents. Everything that came out of her mouth was over-enunciated and expressive. I could just imagine her voice, confiding in our teacher, "Mr.
Goodman, La
rissa has a
lock from the
bathroom in her
desk!" Oddly enough, although I was turned off for awhile, Clara became a good friend of mine shortly after this incident. I played the violin, she piano and voice - we bonded over music, then books we liked which we turned into plays (literally writing everything out into scripts) and acting them out together.
The only other time that I got in trouble in grade-school was also in Mr. Goodman's class. A boy from my class, Zane, was throwing a football in the hallway when he wasn't supposed to. I said, "Zane, you'd better stop that or Mr. Goodman is going to give you a fat lip!" I don't know why, but for some reason my mother always joked about giving me a fat lip as punishment, although I was rarely spanked and did not even fully comprehend how the fat lip would occur. Needless to say, Mr. Goodman found this accusation serious when Zane relayed it to him and that year during conferences we talked about my strange threat as well as my brief foray into vandalism.
