When I was younger I was obsessed with a book called Invisible Lissa. In it, the main character kept a sucker in her dresser that she had been eating when she had strep throat and then saved in case she ever needed to get strep throat again in order to be able to stay home sick from school.
I thought that was an excellent plan. Clearly I'd yet to have strep throat. Or any misadventures with Chloraseptic spray.
The problem with my plan was, I had not been sick and thus could not stash an emergency sickness sucker in my drawer. So I waited until my little sister got sick and then I offered her a lollipop and took it away when she was halfway through with it. That is both cruel and disgusting.
I then proceeded to wrap said lollipop in plastic and stashed it in my sock drawer. I know.
Then came junior high and the first day I ever wanted to stay home because up until that point I was all BOOKS! LEARNING! YAY FOR SCHOOL! I LOVE SCHOOL! SCHOOL IS MY BFF!
Except in junior high, I worried that eighth grader on the bus really WAS going to stuff me in my locker and so I whipped out my trusty germ sucker.
I figured I'd come down with something horrible that would keep me out of school for at least a week or so, giving me plenty of time to a) convince my parents to drive me to school every day and b) come up with an intricate route to my classes that avoided any place I might run into said eighth grader.
I woke up the next morning fully expecting a fever and possibly some sort of lesions, maybe a rash or some hives. And nothing. The flippin' thing didn't work.
So I did something else that I'd read in a book. I faked sick and when my mother left the room I stuck the thermometer to the lightbulb until it read 101 degrees. I feel for today's teenagers who are stuck with those newfangled non-mercury thermometers.
I'm sure I learned a lot of important stuff in books too. I mean, I read a lot of Amish Fiction, y'all. But mostly I remember getting into trouble for trying out stuff I read in a book.
Like when I read a survival guide and thought it would be a good idea to get lost in the woods and try to find my way home with nothing but a bottle of water and a swiss army knife. I was seven. Or that time I read Harriet The Spy and thought it would be a great idea to build a dumbwaiter from my closet to the basement. Newsflash: not such a great idea after all.
I reminisced fondly about my childhood shenanigans until Scarlette came along. Now I'm like NOTHING IS SAFE! NOT EVEN READING!
