

I had just learned how to shoot a rubber band with one hand at school in 5th grade. 1998ish. Thought it was the coolest thing. I had this teacher everyone hated. She was so self centered and mean.
So from the back of the class, I shot a tiny rubber band toward her. She unfortunately saw me out of the corner of her eye. She immediately went into hysterics and I was sent out of class to wait in the office. My mother was called to pick me up. This teacher was crying into the arms of the principle like some victim of some heinous act.
My mom found out that the teacher was one of her best friends from Catholic school. Was outraged at me. I had no idea wtf they were so mad about. I’ve shot tons of rubber bands in class and never before had they gone so nuts about it. I only find out later that they had told my mother I had pretended to shoot a gun at my teacher.
My mother threw me down two flights of stairs and held me on the wall by my neck, feet dangling. She hissed and spit in my face, telling me how embarrassed she was and how horrible I am. And to this day she doesn’t believe I was shooting a fucking rubber band like kids fucking do.
I saved the best of my VHS for a long time. I couldn’t get them for a while as I was moving around. The boxes were in a flood, but the tapes were at the top. Unfortunately, my yearbooks were at the bottom. Anyway, I finally got them out of my mom’s basement where she’d been holding them for me. This was a couple weeks ago.
I was excited to see all those old movies again, but unfortunately I noticed on second glance that the film inside the tapes were either spotted white or completely white. That was the day that I learned that VHS tapes could actually rot. Its a shame…