At age nine I thought I might lose my mind. I learned a lesson the hard way not to wait until the last minute to complete assignments. I got my first gray hairs early in my elementary school years. It all started in a lovely brick building surrounded by trees in a quiet neighborhood called Silverdale. When I went to Cougar Valley Elementary I had a teacher named Mrs. Cogan and she gave a packet of homework every week and you had seven days to finish it. I always took homework and schoolwork seriously even when I was young. I earned every gray hair on my head. I am surprised I am not bald yet with all the stress I put myself under. One sunny Friday morning I started my packet. Although there was one week to finish this work there was one week when I waited until the morning it was due to do the packet.

I was shaking so hard I thought the whole world was shaking with me. I had not ever attempted to do so much work all at once so the shaking was my fear showing. I was sure this packet would actually kill me right there in my dining room. I blamed my whole family, even my dog, for my postponed work. It was everybody’s fault but mine that morning. I pressed down so hard on my crayons they all broke. I was like an elephant with all my school supplies and didn’t stop until every crayon, pencil and paper were destroyed.

 

As the morning went on I started to feel like 10,000 bees had stung me. I actually got mad at my mom because she would not help me at all. She just stood there and reminded me that she started to tell me about it days ago. I did not want to hear that so I continued to break crayons like I was 5 years old. I crushed the crayons one by one between my fingers until I heard them crunch in tiny pieces. I made a high pitch whine noise that sounded like a dying cat. Looking at my crayons on the floor in chunks made me mad. I stomped my feet on top of the broken crayon pieces making a fine dust of wax. Now they looked even worse if that was possible.

As I left for school to turn in my packet I fantasized that it would all work out. I turned in the papers to my teacher who promptly gave them back and told me to take it home and try again. When I got home my brother had his new packet which he started that day. Since I had broken every crayon I owned you would think he would let me use his to finish the work packet but no my bad day just kept going on. My mom said I had to use my own school supplies which if you remember I had destroyed earlier in the same god-awful day. So there I sat using little nubby pieces of broken crayons to finish two weeks of work.

You would think I would have learned by now not to wait until the last minute to do anything for school but oh no! This assignment has apparently been online since last week and I started it at 5pm and just finished at 10pm. So what is the lesson learned? I guess I still have lots to learn.