Tale Of The Tape

A girl asked to borrow some tape today. And by 'borrow', I understood that she would be keeping it. Just like when somebody asks to 'borrow' a Kleenex. I don't want it back, you know. To be specific, she asked, "Can I borrow your tape? That big kind?" Yeah. It's OH SO HARD to pronounce 'masking tape'. I saw that I had an end of a roll in my top drawer. That's because of my ongoing battle with the posters which MOCK me by jumping off the wall nightly. I tossed her the tape. I always toss, because I don't want to be accused of winging a roll of tape and raising a lump on some catchingly-challenged child's forehead. That's how I roll.

First of all, she had to complain about my toss. Let's make it clear that she sits in one of the front-row seats right in front of my desk. The seats that creep forward throughout the day due to my magnetic attraction, or perhaps gravitational pull. A distance of one Pony from me. Yep. If you laid him down across our desks, his head would be on mine, and his feet on hers. So we're talkin' a short distance. "Why do you throw like this?" she whined, mimicking my toss and making me look all girly and feeble at the same time. "Why don't you throw it like this?" Please note that she drew back her arm like a Cy Young Award-winner and mimed firing that roll of tape at the speed of light. "Oh, I don't want to give anybody an excuse to file a lawsuit against me," I said with my fake smile that shows my fangs but does not reach my eyes, the windows to my dark, dark soul. "Hmph. Like anybody would sue you for something like that." Apparently, she lives in some alternate universe, with unicorns and bluebirds and rainbows and unlimited flying masking tape.

Secondly, I must explain that I thought she wanted the tape for her calendar. A student worker came in with a stack of March calendars for the students. It was shortly after this when she asked for the big tape. I assumed she was going to tape the calendar in the front of her notebook. Silly me. You know what happens when we assume.

My mouth dropped open when I saw her rolling that tape around and around her hand. "What are you going to do next, put on a boxing glove?" Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has a thirst for knowledge, you know. She looked at me like the deer that crossed the road in my bright headlights on the way home tonight. "Why would I do that?" Oh, no reason. Why would you roll tape around your hand to attach a calendar to your notebook?

The next thing I knew, she was spanking her purse. Spanking it. In an abusive manner. The boy next to her beat me to it. "What are you doing?" She looked at him like he was simple. "I'm getting the lint off my purse." Sweet Gummi Mary! She saw nothing wrong with doing that right in the middle of class. The boy said, "Do you always use tape to get the lint off your purse?" Again, she gave him the exasperated simpleton look and heaved a big sigh. "No. I usually use a lint brush, but I didn't have one." And I jumped in, "You mean I didn't have one." Another sigh. "Whatever." A girl on the other side of the room said, "I'd like to come over there and smack you right now! Who worries about lint on her purse?" And purse-girl said, "Well, at least I'm not like SOME people who walk around school all skanky and don't even care what her purse looks like." Ooohhh. Them was fightin' words if I ever heard 'em. But the smacky girl has been attending anger management classes twice a week this year. They appear to be working. She just shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at me. And purse-girl wadded up the tape and threw it at the wastebasket, but HELLO, it's tape, by cracky, and it stuck to her hand and then released and came flying past my head and landed behind my chair.

I can't get no respect.