Oh. My. GOD. Did the whole thing with the swear jar ever blow up in my face or what?!

With Leslie gone, there was nobody to tutor the metal shop guys; and consequently, their grades have just dropped like a stone. Not surprisingly, their parents complained to the school that their precious little hairballs were getting F's left, right, and center. Someone traced everything back to the school getting rid of metal shop. Then, they went to speak to Mr. Mandelsson about why he put a swear jar with such a high fee in the metal shop classroom. Not only did he admit to misreading the fee on the swear jar, he mentioned that he had no idea who put the swear jar there. One thing led to another, and somebody (maybe Santiago, but I'm not 100% sure) told Mr. Mandelsson that I put the swear jar in the metal shop classroom.

Great. Now Mr. Mandelsson is just livid. He "confiscated" (read: stole) my glasses and he won't give them back to me unless I apologize for getting him in trouble with the school and costing him his job. It really pisses me off that he chose to take my glasses. His logic was that, because my eyesight is 20/250 with my glasses and 20/300 without them, the glasses are a cosmetic thing and therefore a "reasonable" thing to hold hostage. What does that mean? Does that mean that because I'm legally blind, my glasses are considered a cosmetic thing? Granted, the difference between 20/250 eyesight and 20/300 eyesight doesn't sound like much, but for me; it's the difference between being able to read large print and having to read Braille (I actually prefer Braille over large print, but that's another story). It's the difference between nice, readable handwriting and God-awful caveman scratches. It's the difference between whether or not my socks match. In all fairness, though; I don't need to use a white cane to not walk into things. I can see a little bit. But I won't be able to golf or anything like that without my glasses, so that kind of sucks.

Mr. Mandelsson doesn't want me to just call him and say, "Hey I'm sorry about the swear jar. I put the swear jar there to pay off a bunch of BS traffic tickets that I got for hiking. I've paid them now, and everything has more or less calmed down on my end. No hard feelings?" (Of course not. That'd make things way too easy!) Nope. I've got to write a 6 page, double spaced, 3600 word letter explaining to him as to why I put the swear jar in his classroom, and about why I hate my life because of my actions, and all that other crap; and I have to bring it over to his house.

Sure enough, I wrote a 6 page, 3600 word apology letter to Mr. Mandelsson. All the apologetic stuff was in the first paragraph. The rest was just random crap to make the word count and the page limit check out. Seriously, the second sentence of the fourth paragraph was literally "That last sentence is maybe a real sentence, maybe not." All the important stuff was in the first paragraph, kind of like how Owen Lam writes a book report. I know; I've had to read over his school work. I know how he writes. Now that I mention it, maybe that's what I was thinking of when I decided how I was going to write the letter.

Now, I thought I had the apology letter under control. My dad read it, and he begged to differ. He said I needed to start over and write a real apology letter.

After I (begrudgingly) got started with my new letter, Ursula (my cousin) found it. I kind of wished she didn't, because I got the biggest surprise of my life when she found it.

Ursula: Did you actually stick a swear jar in the metal shop room at your school?

Me: Yeah

Ursula: Was that to pay off those tickets you got for hiking?

Me: How did you know?!

I hadn't said a word to Ursula about the tickets, the swear jar, the fact that each and every one of those doughheads in metal shop had to take physics because metal shop was discontinued. I kind of wish I'd mentioned something about those idiots to her. She could've at least given them her little speech about how physics is a story. If she had, they would actually understand physics and wouldn't be failing.

Ursula: Apparently, a bunch of people (and a couple of horses) were issued these nonsensical traffic tickets.

Me: The city gave a traffic ticket to a horse?

Ursula: Yeah, but that's beside the point. You do realize those tickets you got for hiking were fake, right? I mean, they had "City of Sam Hose" written on them.

Me: Seriously?

Ursula: Seriously. If they were real, then they would neither be misspelled nor would they have "Like us on Facebook!" written on the bottom. You'd have to stick your head in a bucket to miss that.

Me: Slow down, what? Those tickets were fake?!

So, after all that, those stupid tickets weren't even real. I ruined Leslie and Santiago's lives with a dumb decision so I could get $600 to pay nonexistent traffic tickets! I don't even… I can't believe… what … the… asdfghjklpoiuytrewqzxcvbnm…

… WHAT!?