Last year, she told me she got suspended from school when she came home Thursday, March 31st. Well... My kid was always getting suspended for fighting with boys so I never gave the matter a second thought. Since it was the end of the school day, I decided to wait until the next morning to call and see what was up.
As an aside to this, she got punished because I *thought* she was suspended for fighting - a testiment to how hardcore she is about seeing a prank through. There was no PS2, no television, no phone, no Gameboy, no Gamecube... You get the idea. And, because she was punished, and I thought she was going to be home when she should have been at school doing her schoolwork, I made her do all the stuff that I would do when she's at school - laundry, bleaching my counters, scrubbing the toilet, etc. My manager was looking for a volenteer to help her lay flower beds in front of the rental office and I "volenteered" Ashelyn for the job. She bitched her usual bitchery so I wouldn't figure it out. If she had just taken the punishment without complaining, I would have definately known something was up.
Anyway...
So I call the school Friday morning, after I get after Ashelyn for not getting up at 5 am to go to the laundry mat. I ask for the details regarding Ashelyn's suspension. (They know Ashelyn because she practically lived in that office. I just had to say "This is Ashelyn..." and before I can even get the last name out, they've all ready transferred me to the Vice Principal's line.) Ms. Marquette (the VP) starts cracking up. She tells everyone that Ashelyn told me she was suspended so she wouldn't have to come to school today and I could hear them all laughing about it in the background. Somehwere in there some kid said something like "I wish I had told my mom that." or something to that affect.
When she got back from the laundry mat, I started in about how the Vice Principal called and told me that she was suspended for two weeks and that she was really screwed. She had missed so much school due to suspensions that she would have to repeat the 8th grade and go to transitional (bad kid) school next year.
Her eyes bulged and she nearly dropped the laundry but..... She didn't say a word. Then I went on to tell her that she'd have to go to summer school if she wanted to pass the 8th grade and go onto H.S. in August and she would need to take summer school for all five of her academic classes BECAUSE she had flunked all of them because she refused to make up the missed work.
She said "You're lying. I didn't do anything to get suspended for two weeks." About that time the phone rang. Ms. Marquette had called to talk to Ashelyn about her "behavior" the day before and tell her that the boy's parents had filed a police report against Ashelyn. (And no, I did not tell Ms. Marquette to call up and say this) The timing was priceless.
BUT...
She still did not tell me that she was joking. She just didn't know what the hell was going on at this point.
The next day, she finally told me about the joke and said that I needed to find out what was going on because she didn't do anything to get suspended. "For once," she said, "I didn't do anything bad." I was going to carry the joke through a little longer but I felt bad so I told her what the deal was.
She was so pissed... She didn't talk to me for three days, not even to ask me for money.
