What do donuts and toilets have in common?

The easy answer is “a hole”. The actual answer is that middle school boys have a fascination with both. Read on….

I have been working diligently on the manuscript for Caught in the Middle and have neglected preparing a post for the blog. Sorry about that guys. I’m at the point where I’m almost ready to send some chapters off to a few literary agents. It’s intimidating to send your work out there for others to judge and honestly I’m a bit nervous. I have no idea if this is marketable or not but, even if it is not published, I can honestly say the writing has been cathartic for me. I know my pals at the middle school appreciate these ramblings and rants because I write the truth, albeit in a humorous way – but it’s nonetheless the truth.

I hope you get a chuckle out of this excerpt from the chapter entitled Crime and Punishment.

I like to call this next incident “The Donut Box Caper”.

One morning upon arrival at school, Johnny Losthismind and Ted Flushalot decided to buy some donuts. Because they bought six, they were given a nice square, cardboard box to hold their purchase. It took them a whole three seconds to inhale the donuts and hence were left with the empty box.  Normal, sane people would throw the box away and move on. These two boys actually did that. They threw the box in the boy’s restroom and moved on. Now this wouldn’t be a “caper” if it ended there, would it? You can always count on middle schoolers not to disappoint. After wandering the halls for a bit, one of them came up with a scathingly brilliant idea. They decided to go back into the restroom, pull the box out of the garbage, and stuff it down the toilet. Why??? Who the hell knows??? We’re not talking fully developed frontal lobes here. They then proceeded to flush said toilet to see if their little prank would flood the school and thus create pandemonium.

With crack detective work (and the help of cameras in the hallway) I figured out Johnny and Ted were the offenders and began the interrogation.  In order to save his own buttinski, Ted threw Johnny under the bus – which, by the way, is what usually happens. Good cop, bad cop works incredibly well with middle school students. We should have our own detective, police-type show. We could call it “School and Order”, or maybe “Middle School Vice”, or in this instance “The Potty Squad” – it’s a thought.

Anyway, this is the parent conversation that followed this incident:

Me: Hello Mr. Losthismind. I’m sorry to say that Johnny decided it was a good idea to stuff a donut box down a toilet at school today.

Mr. Losthismind: sigh…I trust you will punish him accordingly. You have my full support.

What????? A parent that gets it????!!!! I almost fell out of my chair. 

If you are a parent reading this book and have or will have a middle school child, listen carefully. The school is NOT your enemy. Teachers and administrators are trying to help you raise a productive, law-abiding citizen. Trust that they have done their due diligence and that your son or daughter had a momentary lapse in judgment and indeed acted like a moron. It happens. And here is the clincher. If they think you (parents) are going to believe them instead of the school – get ready for a shocker ... they are going to LIE! Like a rug – like a liar liar pants on fire – like Pinocchio – like a politician. You get the gist.

If this gets published, you will have to buy the book to read about Sierra Pottymouth. Let's just say... her parent DIDN'T get it. A knee slapper for sure.

They say it takes over a month to hear from an agent. I will most definitely keep you posted!