Vanessence: Whensday Weirdness

I don’t know why this memory popped into my head. I guess I was trying to recall weird things that had happened to me. Everyone’s had a weird thing, right? Something strange, inexplicable.

When I was in 6th grade, I attended a very small, private, Christian school in California. It was the cheapest one my mother could find. I’d been going there since 3rd grade, and because the school was so small, and I’d been there since the beginning, I knew almost everyone. I loved my teachers, and my principal, and the ladies who worked in the office. Even the handymen/janitors! People were kind.

We had regular fire drills. Well, I say regular, and they were to us, but they only happened like 2-3 times a school year. The alarms would go off, and each class would march out single file to the edges of the parking lots that surrounded the building. We’d wait a few minutes, talk with our friends, then go back in.

One day though, we had a fire drill only a couple of weeks since the previous one. We knew something was wrong as it was off schedule, and as we walked to our spots at the edge of the parking lot, we saw police cars and fire trucks also in the parking lot by the bathrooms, and also by the office. We thought there was a real fire.

My friends and I chattered. What could have happened? We were more than a little freaked out. I went to our teacher and asked her if she knew what was happening, and of course she said she didn’t.

Eventually we saw the fire trucks and police cars leave, and they let us go back to class, and the day went on.

At some point, my mother and I talked about the weirdness of that day. I was not the kind of kid who shared things with my mother. We were not close. But somehow, that day came up in a conversation, and she asked me if I knew anyone who would call the school and play a prank. I was more than a little confused! Pretty much everyone I knew was in school with me, who would play a prank on the school? What kind of prank?

She told me then that the principal had told her that someone had called the school and asked to speak to me. The secretary, whose son was also in my class, told the person that I was in class and couldn’t be reached. Then the person asked to speak to the principal, by name. The principal happened to be in a meeting at the time, which the secretary told this person, at which point they asked again to speak to me. Again the secretary told them I was in class and couldn’t be reached. I know she offered to take their name and number so the principal could return their call when his meeting was finished.

Now that, in and of itself, is weird. Who was the person? The secretary said it was a male, but she couldn’t really tell how old they were. Were they disguising their voice? Why didn’t this person try to call me at home if they knew me? Why would they call the school? Bizarre.

But that’s not the weirdest part.

When the secretary told this person for the 2nd time that I could not be taken out of class, they told her that they’d placed bombs in the girls bathroom and would blow up the school if she didn’t get me to the phone.

Hence the police cars and fire trucks. But, of course, there weren’t any bombs, thank goodness! Still, they had to have it checked out.

I still wonder who did that, and why. I’ve always wondered if the person who did it would ever confess to me that it was them, if I still know them, if I ever knew them. It could have been someone who found a copy of the school yearbook and just randomly picked me, for all I know.

Weird.