Cheese and Cupcakes on a Morning Mountain Bagel

What is that, you might ask? It was my reactionary defense mechanism when an administrator would drag me into her office in high school. See, every time I would write a journal entry in writing class, I would end up in the principal's office having to explain to the thought police why I wrote what I did. Whether it be an entry about blowing shit up or pontificating on the fornication habits of the hot student teacher in the math wing, I would always be 'required to explain my actions.' The irony of it all was that I was encouraged to "write freely and with emotion." I was 'allowed' to write about anything on my mind. Because my teacher prefaced the class with this explanation, my naivety got the best of me. I remember one story in particular that I penned about the Clintons being referred to as the first family. I didn't understand anything about civics at the time, I mean after all, I went to a government school, but it created quite a bit of angst in my teenage mind that one family would be held in a higher esteem than ordinary folks. Some would call this thought process liberalism, I call it my inherent anti-royalty complex. In either case, I was young and relatively stupid. Suffice to say that the story was a dumb teenage diatribe full of f-bombs and had an unnecessary emphasis on anger. As per usual, I received an official letterhead from the front office the next day that Administrator McCloud needed to see me during fifth period. She opened her statements with some blah blah about terroristic threats along with a verbatim reading of federal statutes (this is well before the islamic problem came to fruition by the way) and then said to me, "what say you?" At this point in my career as a pseudojournalist, my give-a-fuck meter was low on battery juice so I said the first thing that came to mind. I looked up with the most serious facial expression I could muster and stated "cheese and cupcakes on a morning mountain bagel." She couldn't help it. She cracked a smile. The old heifer was human after all. I was amazed! But after she composed herself after holding back a well-needed laugh, she promptly signed off on two days of in school suspension. What a bitch, but such is life. After five or so visits to the purgatory that is a government school administration office, I was placed in the 'special' class. I remember my grandmother crying when she found out about my placement. She was sad to find out that I was retarded. I thought about trying to explain to her that being placed in a behavioral problems class isn't the same as being retarded, but she was old school and it wouldn't of made a difference. God rest her soul. She was the only grandmother on the block that had a retarded grandson. I know her BINGO pals gave her shit for it, but she loved me regardless of what those old leather bags thought. So hear it is 13 years after the fact and I'm still writing my "retard talk." I never got into novels until after I was out of that hideous government institution, but the very first one I read was George Orwell's 1984. It was almost like this 50 year old novel was written about the very institution I so despised. "How did this end up in the fiction section?", I thought. If the administration office wasn't the spitting description of The Ministry of Truth, I don't know what is. McCloud's insistence that yes, while I was free to write what I wanted, it had to be "sensitive" to other cultures and worldly norms was the textbook definition of NEWSPEAK. She wanted me to be Winston and do Winston's job at the same time. I guess there are three morals to this story. One, don't send your children to the government to be educated. Two, grandmothers will love their retarded grandchildren no matter what. And three, when someone pulls a superiority complex on you and ask you a rhetorical question, just look them in the eye and say "Cheese and Cupcakes on a Morning Mountain Bagel."