with a capital T that rhymes with D that stands for Dante

I have not had any exciting or entertaining adventures for quite a while, mostly because I've been all bedridden and behind in my scholarly duties for what seems like years.

So, I will beguile you with tales from long ago, when I was young and reckless and had adventures worth beguiling people with. (What's that? You don't like my sentence constructions? Well too bad for you. You're in time out!)

Here is something that happened to me in high school: I got in Trouble. It was the first day of my senior year. Before class had even started I was in In-School Suspension.

The reason I got in trouble was: me and Abe hung a banner over the front entrance of the school, with secret signalling accessory-to-the-crime participation from Melissa and Vanessa and Trisha about whether or not the banner was even and if it was draping in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The banner was made out of sheets, and it had words painted on it.

The words said "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

This was a Hilarious Joke, because do you know what the name of my high school was? I will give you three guesses. (Don't really guess please because that ruins the banter.) Do you give up?

The name of my high school was Hellgate. Hellgate High School.

Isn't that a funny joke?

Well, the Janitor did not think so and he got out his walkie talkie and radioed to the other janitors and the Vice Principal and they all chased us down. Abe went one way and I went another way but there were too many grim old men with walkie talkies for the likes of us and we were captured. And taken into separate rooms and made to write out confessions about what we had done. And our Parents were Called at Home.

The thing was, was that Abe's parents weren't home. (Actually Abe's dad was at City Hall because Abe's dad was the mayor. No fooling.) So the Vice Principal left a message on the machine (this was back in the days of land lines and answering machines) and Abe erased it later when he got home.

(Abe's parents, do you read this website? Did you know this story already? Hi!)

The other thing was, when they called my mom, they also didn't get the reaction they wanted. Because my mom had helped us make the banner. Because she thought it was a Hilarious Joke.

So she yelled at the Vice Principal for wasting his time on such literate and well-intentioned young people as me and Abe, and by the way did he get her letter complaining about the armed security guards? She yelled at him about that too. My mom's a spitfire.

Abe and I were suspended for two days. We had to sit in rooms and be quiet instead of going to classes.

Then we got out of our punishment with a new found Respect for Authority and we have been living on the Right Side of the Law ever since.

The End.


(hey. I noticed that I got a little carried away with the Meaningfully Capitalized Noun Phrases, there, in that story. I think it's from reading Mary Poppins. I'm not really sorry, though. I'm sure you'll get through it somehow.)

Update: Meaningful Capitalization of Noun Phrases is apparently a Genetically Inherited Trait. My dad, on the President's Recent Visit to Rwanda:

If I recall from planning for The Big Conference last June, there are 580 rooms in Kigali, but that includes some Decidedly Local hotels, which would not be suitable for Travelling Official People. There might be 250 or so that would work. The German President was visiting, and most of the advance team couldn't come until after he and his posse were gone.

For more evidence, see also my sister's comment below. And also her Guest Blog Post from a couple years ago.