When I was a kid, once in a very rare while, I would get to stay home from school for a "sick day". Sometimes I would fake the sick. In fact, most of the time I would fake it. You see, when I was a school girl, there wasn't anything in the world that I wanted less to be. I loathed school, every single minute. I spent every school day wishing it were the last day of the last year of any schooling that would be required. My daydreams were huge and there wasn't any room for reality. I saw very little value in being held captive in a classroom and, by the time I was in the second grade, I had already run away from school. I didn't get very far because a relative of my grandmother lived a block away from the school and thought it strange that a little six year old would be roaming around the Bronx in the middle of the day and she turned me in. Honestly, what was I thinking?
On those wonderful days when my mother fell for my good acting and I got to stay home, I had the pleasure of the house all to myself. With both parents working and my brother dutifully at school entertaining his friends, I could watch T.V. all day and all I had to do was turn it off briefly when the phone rang. Dressed in my pajamas, unwashed and unbrushed, I actually made myself look sort of sick just to not make myself feel sort of guilty. I had one less day of school with which to contend and I didn't want my conscience to get in the way of a good time or a good daydream. Hour after hour passed, from one silly show to the next. There were game shows and comedy shows and afternoon soaps, one rolling into the next and with each hour, the day grew closer to the time that the school bell would ring for the rest of the kids,marking the end of my sick day.I would turn the T.V.off, get dressed, washed, brushed and ready to greet the girl next-door who had my books and class assignments in her arms. No more T.V. until after dinner, like normal people.
As I grew up and started to see some value in being at school, I hardly ever took a sick day. Doing so would have meant missing out on six hours of being with my friends outside of the walls of our homes and I was not willing to give that up. So, I lost my daytime T.V.grip and totally lost track of who and what was going on in the world of daytime entertainment. And, as I grew into adulthood, I found something new to loathe. The very sound of T.V. before evening made me crazy then and even more now. You might as well just stick pins in my feet or hold my hands in boiling water because I would enjoy the experience more than one minute of CNN or Judge Judy. The minute I enter a room and catch one nanno-second's worth of sights or sounds coming from a T.V. set, I cringe and, in an instant, I am transported back to the playroom of my family home, where......
I'm there, having a sick day,
knowing that at three o'clock,
the joy will be over and
I will have to become One again
with the rest of the
inmates.
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