The 1980s

Karma, Cake, Pot and the Shittiest Teacher of All Time

He went to prison, but not for the things he did to me.

That’s the landline in question. For some reason, I am typing in the kitchen in my bathrobe. No idea what my sister is doing standing there, or why I allowed somebody to take a picture of me when my hair and makeup were not done — I was a big priss at that age. This has to be pretty close in time to the events in the story. (Family photo)

It was one of those first nice spring days, and my friends and I decided we could slip out of study hall, go to my house, bake a cake and sneak back into school with the cake before anybody knew we were gone.

Yes, that’s the kind of bad-ass baker rebels we were.

We were little juvenile delinquents armed with measuring cups and cocoa powder. No school could hold us when we had cake batter on our minds.

Actually, I was a pretty good kid who stayed out of trouble, but we really wanted to make this chocolate mayo cake that was popular at the time. It was an easy recipe you could mix within minutes. (This is pretty close.) It was a perfect fit for the length of study hall.

It was going fine. I had the cake in the oven and a half-dozen of us were hanging out in the kitchen enjoying our little caper when the phone rang.

Not a phone. The phone. There was just one. It was a beige landline mounted to the wall, and for some stupid reason, I answered it.

It was the typing teacher, Andy Sue.