Sarcasm is a major part of who I am. I tell people, English is not my native language, sarcasm is. My sarcastic and playful personality is what introduced me to some of my best friends, but my sarcasm has also gotten me in some of my deepest trouble.
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| My usual pissed off self |
In 8th grade I had a bad life, a bad attitude, and bad grades. My progress reports and report cards were all C's and D's. That was the norm for my grades starting in 6th grade and lasting to the end of 8th grade. But if you were to ever look at my 8th grade report card, there is one surprising mark on it.
PE, the subject I have never liked, had an A. Most would figure this is because physical education is an easy A. Normally this would be true, but for me it was a little different.
This year I had a teacher who had a reputation for being gullible, and very clumsy. If I had known she would fall for it, I would have done it sooner, but the real story, I was very honestly just trying to be funny while in an especially sarcastic mood.
The teacher told us to run 5 laps around the gym. I raised my hand and approached her with a look of deep concern and said, "I can't do that. Running is against my religion. In fact, it's one of the worst sins there are!"
I smirked figuring she was just about to yell at me to knock it off and get back in line to run. But to my surprise, she gasped and covered her mouth, "I'm sorry, I didn't know! Is jogging ok?"
I was impressed, I thought she was responding to me with the same tone of sarcasm. I was not used to adults going along with my jokes. I answered, "In my religion, we believe that running makes you miss all the beauty and even warnings of what's to come. The slower you walk the better. It's frowned upon to do anything in a rush, but it's sinful to go too fast."
She then told me that I could walk as slow as I needed to. So while the rest of the class ran around me, I strolled along with a smile of victory, even if it was only going to last one day.
To my surprise, when we had class again, the teacher had the class run again, and reminded me that I could walk. This lasted the entire semester.
I was uneasy about it. I didn't know if she was still just being sarcastic, and was going to fail me because I wasn't running. But I tried to tell myself that it wouldn't matter if she gave me a bad grade, because it would match all my other classes.
The end of the semester, I read through my report card. "C, C, C, D, D, D, A??!" I couldn't believe I had an A. it was the first I'd had since 3rd grade. That was the glorious moment of truth, when I realized she really wasn't being sarcastic, and was fine with me walking and doing everything slowly, because she didn't want me to sin in my religion.
Needless to say, the next semester, I milked it out for all it was worth, and was as lazy as humanly possible, and blamed it all on my religion. That next semester ended with an A as well.
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| 8th grade graduation, 2 months before I became a Christian, and the first time in years that I tried to look nice. |
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