Upon entering my junior year in high school I thought that I should begin familiarizing myself with the inner workings of an automobile to better prepare myself for adulthood. I enrolled in Auto 101 as my knowledge of an automobile was non existent and I wanted to start with the basics such as an oil or tire change. What I got instead was enrolled in Auto 103, solely by human error, one of which no one at Western High School seemed all that eager to correct. I went to my counselor who was a burned out hippy who met my demand to be placed in an entry level class with the memorable line of "What do I look like, the appropriate class fairy?" My friend Dominic convinced me to stay in the class and that it'd be an "easy A dude". I didn't get an A, or a B, or a C or even a D in that class. I got an F. And apparently the F stood for fag, which is what I was referred to by numerous people in that class. Or some bastardization of my last name, something along the lines of Fretecinni, or Lucobuttafuco. Either way, it was a soul sucking experience that, for me, clarified why kids enter schools with assault rifles. Not that I was handy with a rifle. I wouldn't even feel comfortable cleaning a gun. But I could see why and how kids get to that stage.
Around this time, I had become quite the accomplished baker and shoplifter. Most people can only manage to excel at one or the other. Both taking a certain amount of finesse, skill and outright love for the craft. I'd bake to release steam after getting home from another day of spiritual gang rape at my high school. My focus was on cookies, with a minor in assorted cakes. I'd shoplift mostly at convenience stores, primarily gum, mints and magazines. I knew guys that did beer runs which wasn't my forte at all. If I was going to shoplift, it was with the intent to make my breath smell better, not get sloshed.
After an intense period of hazing at the hands of a few of my classmates, I went home and began to plot my revenge and the exacting of it. While I furiously rolled another batch of cookie dough into a dozen balls per cookie sheet, I experienced an epiphany: What if i bridged the gap between my two favorite extracurricular activities, shoplifting and baking and poisoned the the entire class? Well, ok, not poison, that's crazy talk. I was thinking more along the lines of baking (there's one skill) several dozens of cookies with industrial amounts of of Ex-Lax (shoplifted, of course, there's the other skill).
Not wanting to enter any prolonged period of incarceration, or compromise my ability to become a shriner when I got older, I worried about the legality of feeding an unsuspecting class of assholes cookies that would cleanse them of just about everything but their liver and soul. I reckoned the one to ask about such matters would be my Mom (I never said I was the sharpest kid). It went more or less like this: Me: Mom, lets say someone slips an entire class tainted cookies. What kind of time is that kid looking at? Mom: Luke, you will go to prison. Do you know what happens to people like you in prison? And I did. Yeah they come out with sweet tattoos and and big and buff, but its the showers and shiv's that concern me. Not to be deterred though, I went ahead with Operation: Auto Shop Colon Blow.
I baked the high powered cookies and brought them into auto shop. The other students saw them and started asking me for a cookie, some of them double fisting the cookies. You'd think it was strange for a guy to walk into an auto shop with several dozens of cookies, but seeing how the other elective I took was Home Economics, it made a great deal of sense. I have to admit that I felt bad when the innocent bystanders and the instructor took cookies, but in situations like these they're referred to as collateral damage and I wasn't in the position to single out those who could and couldn't partake of my delicious cookies. A few buddies in class knew about what I was doing, as did some of my teachers. I had teachers write in my yearbook that I should avoid feeding the general public in the future.
Looking back, do I feel bad? I suppose so. Did Auto Shop 103 have it coming as a whole? No, but a few did. I dunno, whats the worst that happened? I know a few of them didn't come to school for a few days. And a few of the main offenders found out about what I did, and thought it was hilarious. I'm just thankful I wasn't caught. And for both my pacifism and lingering love for baking. They both have served me well.
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