“WAKE UP, ARUNE!” My mom screamed from the kitchen.“Ugh,” I sleepily replied as I forced myself up after another few minutes of lying in bed.

“Why do I even need to go to school?” I lazily asked.

“Cause if you don’t, you will always be the same bonehead you are now.”

My mom was always cranky in the morning, but I mostly just ignored her. It was a peaceful day, the birds were singing, the flowers were blooming, and I was energized and happy, but it was just the same as a gloomy day because of school. Same old school.

“Another day of second grade. Oh boy,” I thought to myself sarcastically. I despised school. If it wasn’t for the fact that we were enslaved for 6 hours, I would be fine with it, but sadly that is not the case. Feeling very unhappy, I sluggishly got ready and walked out the front door to catch up to my best friend Keenan.

“Hey,” I said to Keenan panting.

Keenan was tall and a little pudgy. Keenan always had my back, and we did mostly everything together.

“Hey,” he replied back.

We kept talking back-and-forth, until we eventually reached school. I waited for school to start while conversing with my classmates about what they were going to do during the weekend and what their plans were for the day. After around 10 minutes, our teacher, Mrs. Abdoli, greeted and invited us into the classroom. I didn’t really like her as a teacher, but neither did she like me. She was averagely tall and wide, but Mrs. Abdoli looked like she belonged in a museum of dinosaurs, because she was old and had an attitude just like the dinosaurs did. Mrs. Abdoli also looked as if her eyebrows nested a racoon. School started. First came math, then recess, reading, language arts, and then best part of the day, lunch.

As a second grader, you would eat your lunch and then go and play. So I sat down with my friends, happily enjoyed my lunch, which was enchiladas, and ate with a plastic fork and knife. Gobble, munch, crunch, swallow went everyone’s food. I was chitchatting with my friends, and we all were slowly awaiting play time. DING! DING! DING! The bell rang. We all sprinted to get the best ball and went to a 4-square court, but before packing up I decide to keep the knife I ate with and have a little fun with it. I started going behind my friends with the plastic knife, holding it up to their neck, and yelling at them “Give me your money!” My friends knew it was a joke, but others didn’t. I started taking this way too far and did it to everybody. The scary part was that not only was it a knife, but there was red enchilada sauce dripping from it. Everybody knew that I was just joking around, but one kid started freaking out. He was acting as if 9/11 had taken place right at that exact moment, in front of his eyes. He ran and told a teacher and my heart stopped. I was scared out of my mind. Having fun had just turned into whether or not I was going to sleep in my house.

DING! DING! DING! The bell rang. That was our cue to go back inside class. As I entered Mrs. Abdoli’s class, I heard the loudspeaker say, “Arune, please come to the office. Again, Arune, please come to the office.” I slowly left the class as everyone was looking at me wondering what I had done. My eyes started watering, but I refused to let tears out. I eventually reached the office. The office felt cold, dusty, and old. I could see a small, black, and ugly spider crawling along the wall, and with my hands covered in sweat, I dreaded the fact that I needed to face the queen of all spiders. The principal.

“I’m Arune,” I softly said.

“What?” The secretary asked.

“I’m Arune.” I said a little bit louder.

“What? Speak louder.”

At this point I knew there was no escaping the inevitable, so I let out a huge sigh and said in my regular voice loud and proud, “I'm Arune!!!”

“Oh yes, the principal has been waiting for you over in that room that is labeled Principal’s Office, and there is no need to shout.”

My face fell,but I still trotted forward trying to show no signs of being scared. I opened the door to the principal’s room, sat in a chair right in front of her desk, and we started to have a little chat.“So what did you do?” The principal asked.

“Um… I sort of… Took, like a knife… And played around with it with my friends. Well… not a sharp one. It was just plastic,” I said trying to make it less likely to get in trouble.

“You do know that you can get expelled for that.”

“But it was all a joke. I never harmed anybody.”

We went back-and-forth in a heated debate, but luckily, my ways of persuasion worked and my expulsion turned into a one day suspension which was a good thing, cause then I could skip school for a day even though I knew my parents would be horrified by this.

Now when I look back at this moment, I’d laugh, but I realize that there is a lesson that can be taken from this. Things that seem funny are not always the right thing to do.