The walk to class was intense. Everything was ready. I was ready.

I walked in and to my complete astonishment the whole classroom had been rearranged into about five columns running about six desks deep. Even better, was that Senora V was allowing us to pick where we wanted to sit. Boom. To the back for me!

Other than sitting in the back where I could easily peek down at my wonderfully public cheat sheet, there was another critical obstacle I would be able to overcome with the ability to select my own seat. Senora V had two different tests, an odd numbered test and an even numbered. Obviously this is a tactic many teachers employ to prevent cheating by way of peeking at a neighbors test answers. Your neighbors answers, won’t help you if you have separate tests.

The scantron we stole, and my cheat sheet answers were from an odd numbered test, seventeen. I needed to receive an odd numbered test. So I started counting from the right side of the class and selected a seat near the other guys in the back of the class. Most importantly, seat five. This stroke of luck has sealed a certain victory. Now all I had to decide was what I wanted to score exactly.

“Hey man, did you memorize the answers?” Derek asked smugly.

“Nah man, the binder. The answers are on the binder at my feet.” I replied.

“What?” He was confused.

“I’ll explain later. What are you doing?” I asked.

“Under my shirt.” He patted his stomach so I could hear the crackling of his cheat sheet.

“Alright man. Good luck. No snitching.” I wasn’t real confident about his plan.

“Ok class, it’s time to begin. Put everything away.” Senora stood up with a stack of tests. “Oh my, you boys can’t possibly think I would let you all sit by each other, right?” The way she said it definitely made me wonder why we would all overlook her splitting us up.

“Senor Jordan. Come sit up front.” She pointed at one of the two desks closest to hers.

“She chose to move me? What!?” I thought to myself completely baffled.

“Ok.” I responded out loud. I grabbed my binder and backpack and calmly did just as I was told. I sat down in the desk directly facing hers. The distance between our desks could not have been more then three yards.

I quickly began counting from the right side of the class again to see if I remained in an odd seat. Seventeen.

“Thank God.” I thought relieved. Then immediately felt guilty for thanking God in the assistance of my crimes.

This whole new seating situation was actually even better now than the situation I had originally chosen for myself. I still had my cheat sheet, and now I’m sitting directly in front of the teacher in a seat she moved me to! How could she possibly ever accuse me of cheating once this over with? As if someone could cheat directly in front of her. And that was precisely what I was going to do. HAHA!

As Senora was giving the final instructions I was already imagining the look on her face when tomorrow she has to write an eighty six for my final grade. She’s going to know I must have cheated, but will have absolutely no way to prove it. This is so perfect.

“Ok class, good luck, and no talking.” Senora said as she walked from the center to the left side of the room.

“Wait. What? That side?” My mind began racing.

Before I could even count for myself my test hit my desk. Fourteen. An even number. All my answers are no longer any good. I started to panic.

“Hey switch me tests.” I whispered a silent demand to the person behind me.

“No.” The expected response.

“Ah crap. Really? Really? All this planning. All this work. The most ingenious cheating strategy I could possibly come up with and to lose with it based on a flip of the coin. No. There has to be another way. I must be able to do something.” These were the gist of my immediate thoughts.

“You know… It doesn’t really matter what test I received as long as my scantron ends up in the odd numbered test pile to be corrected. I need to write an odd number. But I can’t just write an any odd number on the scantron. What if whatever number I write ends up being noticed as a duplicate number by Senora?” There is a way around this I began to realize.

I began counting. There were thirty six students. On my scantron in the box titled “Test Number”, I wrote thirty seven.

I reasoned that writing a duplicate number could result in me getting busted much easier than writing a number that is one figure over the actual class size. After all, even if Senora noticed thirty seven and knew there were only thirty six students, could she prove a day later that I didn’t actually receive test number thirty seven? Probably not. She had more than thirty seven tests because her other classes were larger so maybe thirty seven actually did accidentally get mixed into the middle of the tests before she passed them out. Or at least, this would be my alibi.

Senora stood at the front of the room audibly giving questions. The first ten or so questions the class had to answer based on Senora’s audible statements. It was an oral part of the final. I didn’t listen to a single word she said. I looked down at my binder, counted to about thirty and then checked a box. Then repeated this over and over again. I remember trying not to laugh or smirk as the thought of what I was accomplishing became more awesome with each circled answer box.

I easily cheated through the first half of the test and began working on honestly completing the second half of the test. It was going to be way to hard to flip the paper over in front of Senora. I reached down a few times to try slowly sliding it, but there was no sly or silent way to pull it out and slide it back in. So, I was going to have to do the second half the old fashioned honest way.

Then it happened. The unplanned perfection to the plan. Derek had completed his test. He started trotting down my aisle whispering out loud how easy the test had been. Surely it was a part of his act that the test was easy and that everyone else should know how he felt about it including Senora as he was the first of anyone to complete the test. Then Derek tripped and tripped good.

“Whoa!” Derek was surprised by his near fall and everyone else who saw him stumble chuckled.

“Are you ok?” Senora asked a little stunned.

I laughed and reached down, grabbed my binder and slid it back to where it was sitting before Derek had tripped over it. Not only that, since there was laughter and noise I managed to not only slide my binder back to my feet but also pull out my sheet, flip it, and slide it back in as I had planned all along.

Derek and I had not talked about tripping over my binder. He genuinely tripped over it and opened up my perfect opportunity. And an opportunity I seized.

“(explitive) me. See what happens? See why you don’t try to cheat? You must be one dumb son of a (explitive). I’m soooo screwed.” The thoughts were accompanied by that horrible sick feeling I’ve only experienced few times while awaiting severe judgement.

“Well, maybe Derek can weasel out of it?” Hope tried to get the better of my thoughts now. “Maybe he won’t rat me out? He’s a good friend. Maybe he’ll take the fall on his own.”

Over the next 10 minutes I marched around the adjacent buildings, peeking around corners to see if i could get a glimpse of Derek walking out of the class, bag over his head, noose around his neck. Then the bell rang ending the short break between study periods and still no Derek, no Senora, no no one?

“Well, they’re all still in there or I missed them leave when I walked away initially. In either case, I might as well head to my next class.” I reasoned.

I began trotting across campus and then I saw Derek. He was just trotting along. How could this be?

“Derek! Hey Derek!” I shouted and began jogging over to him. “Derek? What the hell happened man? I watched Senora walk in there.” He started laughing and breathing sighs of relief. “Dude, you didn’t get in trouble?”

“She didn’t see me.”

“What? What do you mean? I watched her walk in, and I saw you. Yea man, I saw you!”

“She didn’t see me.” He repeated. “I stood in the corner of the class behind her book case. She never completely walked into the room, she had her back to me the whole time.”

An eruption of laughter ensued as he showed me the scan tron. Not only did he have a scan tron but he had thee scan tron that read 89 circled with red ink.

“What about Britney?” I asked Derek.

“Ah she’s cool man. She almost started laughing though when she was walking out. But she didn’t say anything.”

Derek then explained quickly what happened and why he didn’t wait for my signal. He basically freaked out. But his reverse pivot to the corner of our classroom salvaged his error and ultimately, luck was on our side.

Map of the room. Arrows indicate lines of vision.

“Ok man, well my next final is easy so write down all the answers on something and ask to use the restroom at 11:00 AM. I’ll meet you there and get the scan tron from you. Cool?” We were both still fighting off laughter.

“Sounds good.”

We began walking to our separate classes feeling both alleviated and victorious.

I sat down in my world history class and immediately began sharing what had just happened with the guys I was close with in there. Kevin, Joey, and James all probably thought I was at least semi full of shit, but it didn’t matter. I would blaze through Mr. Scudders (football coach) final and go pick up my treasure from Derek. As I figured, Scudders final was simple and then I waited until 10:55.

“Mr. Scudder, I’m going to the bathroom.” I approached his desk.

“Yup, go for it.” He was one of my favorite teachers of all time.

I met up with Derek like we agreed.

“Hey, thanks man.” I told him as he handed me the scan tron.

“Just so you know” Derek replied, “I let Gio, and Matt get the answers also.”

“Matt? How the hell did he know?” I asked.

“I told him. He knows the deal though, he’s not going to say anything and he needs an A on the final to get an A in the class.”

“Well I hope he doesn’t make it obvious that he cheats, and he better not say anything. No more telling people man.”

“Deal. Alright give me that back at lunch.” Derek was referring to the scan tron.

“Why man?”

“I’m going to set that shit on fire. Destroy the evidence.” Our laughter reignited and  I began walking back to Scudders class.

Back in my chair, I laughed some with my friends in Scudders class while flaunting the scan tron. Even Mr. Scudder had asked what was so funny, and I was proud enough to briefly share with him a glimpse of the accomplishments from the morning. Of course I didn’t give him details, but he knew I was in the middle of pulling a fast one on Senora V, and I’m sure deep down, he was a little proud that someone was going to get the best of her.

I had about 30 minutes before our 50 minute lunch break. After that, it would be time to enter Senora V’s class for the final. I began memorizing the answers on the scan tron. Apparently it was a 100 question final and answers ranged from A-D. I remember after 10 minutes realizing it was going to be impossible to even memorize 50 questions in this short of time frame even if there was no distractions.

“Great, I have the answers and not enough time to memorize them. I could always hide the answers on my thigh, maybe under my shirt?  No. All of that is to risky. No basic cheating strategy is going to work with Senora V.” The more I was thinking the more obvious it became that I needed a very creative plan.

“I need something solid. Something I can look directly at. Something that can be out in the open. But something only I can read.”

Then I saw it. A girls binder with a transparent cover that girls would use to put pictures of themselves and friends as custom decor.

“That’s it.” I thought. “All I need is to barrow one of those binders and lay it on the ground next to me with the answers staring up at me.”

Then I grabbed a lined sheet of paper. Made 4 notches at the top. I counted how many blue lines there were. 29. Ok, well I can have 50 answers on the front and the other 50 on the back if I do this right. I looked at the answers on the scan tron and began moving a line up and down each half line on a sheet of paper, stopping in formation with the corresponding notch at the top of the page. Each notch represented either A, B, C or D from the scan tron.

This is how it appeared:

This is how I it read:

 “This is pretty clever.” I thought surprised with myself. “However, this could still look very suspicious on the ground. Who puts random graphs in the covers of their binders? If for some reason Senora V happened to notice it, even if there was no way she could prove it was a cheating aid, she could still be careful enough to have me put my binder in my bag, or remove it from my sight.”

I began looking around again hoping to stumble across some final piece to make this all come together. I looked at my surroundings and then looked at the graph I’d created. Look around, look at the graph, think. Look around, look at the graph, think. Then the obvious dawned on me, “This paper looks like a graph. This paper is a graph!”

Now the question was “Is it a math graph? No. It looks more like a chemestry graph and I’m taking chemestry this semester.  Perfect.”

As a guy, I may not decorate a binder with pictures if my friends and random graphs. But, I may certainly put a chemestry assignment as the cover of my chemestry binder, especially if it was an assignment I was proud of. So I began transforming my very basic cheat sheet into something I could genuinely be proud of in real life that belonged in the cover of a subject binder.

At lunch, I met up with Derek to give him the scan tron back and raced around to find a girl with a binder she could lend me. Once I had that I placed the cheat sheet in and made sure I could read it from a sitting height. I grabbed some food and then practiced flipping the paper over at my feet silently. I knew there was a possibility I wouldn’t be able to get the flip in, but worst case scenario, I had the first 50 questions dancing in my eyesight and what a glorious dance it would be.

The bell rang and I headed to Senora V’s class one “final” time. 🙂

My sophomore year in high school was a pretty big turning point from innocents to deviousness. The more I look back on this story the more sense it makes. It’s a definite all time camp-fire favorite. During this season of life I transitioned out of sports to employment, receiving a license and a car, going from so little independence to so much freedom and all of this really moved me from the shy governable type, to more of a bold outspoken revolutionary.

There are a few important things to know before I enter into this narrative. Senora V (I will not use her full name) was one of the first teachers in my life I could not understand. I was a good kid who received only A’s and B’s as grades until her class and I felt very frustrated by her teaching style. I also felt targeted by her throughout my year under her. Often I was guilty by association in her class that led to punishment I didn’t believe I should have received. It didn’t help that I also saw very little benefit for being forced to learn Spanish in the first place. Eventually I gave up trying in her class knowing I was doomed to receive my second “C” and that left a very bitter taste in my mouth. Enjoy.

“An 89?”
Derek, Gio, David and I all looked astonishingly at one another and even had to giggle because it made sense. Why on earth should any of us expect Senora V to give any of her students a reasonable shot at an “A” on her end of the year final?

“Even the Mexican kids yesterday can’t figure out her Spanish tests.” We all laughed and continued cracking jokes to ourselves.

I was glad that I didn’t have to torture myself over this final. Since I had a whopping 73 percent, I already knew my grade wasn’t going anywhere up or down from this final I would be taking in a little less than 5 hours. But as for David, Derek, Gio and others? Yes, this was very unfortunate news. No one from the first 2 periods during this final week schedule received an “A” the previous day. No one. Ridiculous! Doesn’t Senora understand that our choices of colleges directly correlates with our GPA’s? Doesn’t she understand that being strict and unfair screws up our lives going forward? What is she trying to prove? That she’s a real first class bitch?

“So now that you all understand how hard this test is I suggest you all study during this morning period. If you have any questions I will be at my desk putting in grades and good luck later today.” This was strange that she was actually letting us decide for ourselves if we wanted to study. And letting us sit wherever we wanted?

My three friends and I decided an hour of studying wasn’t really going to help us with this one. We all sat together and began joking with one another like any normal group of 16 year old guys in a class room would. At one point, the topic of our joking became, “How can we cheat on this final?” While they were all discussing ridiculous super powers they would need in order to cheat, I began actually contemplating a way that we could. After all, I hated this class, and nothing would be more gloriously vengeful than baffling my least favorite teacher with a stunningly awesome grade on her final that she seemed so pleased with because it was so difficult.

“Guys, I think we could cheat.” I said. They all chuckled until my stare of seriousness silenced them.

“Wait, really? How?” asked Derek.

“Well, she’s grading the answers to the test from yesterday right now. Which means once she’s finished recording the grades she’s never going to really look at those scan trons again. If we could get our hands on one of those scan trons, we would have all the answers that were answered correctly on it.”

“But how would you get a scan tron?” asked David.

“I don’t know, I’m just saying if we could get one, we would be in the clear. I haven’t totally thought this through, I’m just saying it’s possible.”

“We should ask Cynthia.” said Derek.

“Dude, she’s not going to do that.” We all knew the teachers assistant was cool, but not that cool.

But eventually as we were all still formulating a plan one of us asked Cynthia if she knew of a way we could get our hands on one of the scan trons. She laughed, assumed it was a joke (because who would actually try to cheat on Senora V?), and was no help whatsoever.

“Ok guys. I got it. Senora leaves at break right? What if one of us hid in the back of the classroom (for some odd reason the school used this classroom to keep a bunch of extra desks stacked on one another in the back of the classroom during this last week of the school year) and waited until everyone left? Once the coast is clear, get up, go to her desk, grab one of the scan trons and walk out.”

“Won’t the door be locked?” someone pointed out.

“You can’t get locked in a classroom from the inside. Right?” I replied not being completely sure.

“No. You can’t. I know you can’t.” said Gio.

“But what if we can’t find the scan tron or someone walks in?” asked Derek.

“Well, I just watched Senora put the scan trons in the top left drawer of her desk.”

“No way.” said Derek. We were all smiling.

“Yea, and whoever hides under the desks will still have a clear view of the window. I’ll just make sure to be the last person out of the classroom and I’ll give a signal when the coast is clear.”

I didn’t actually believe any of us would go for this. I was actually very surprised the plan was even coming out of my mouth. I certainly wasn’t going to hide in the back of the class. Even with a look-out, it seemed risky.

“I’ll do it.” Derek boldly volunteered himself.

“What?” The rest of us were surprised by this.

“Yea, I’ll do it. I’ve had enough of Senora’s crap. We’re doing this.” Derek was serious.

All of the sudden our joking, and lightened moods became real stern and focused. I spent the rest of the period inspecting from a distance the best spot to hide while thinking and rethinking to see if there was something significant we were overlooking. But I knew as long as Derek could slip away unnoticed, we would be in the clear.

We waited until the last 5 minutes of the period. All the other students began packing their items into their backpacks, everyone was standing and being extra social considering this is the last period we would all have in this class other than the final period that we would share later this afternoon. Gio, David and I set up a wall by standing next to one another in order to obstruct everyone’s vision while Derek slyly and quietly wiggled his way into what became his hiding place. I knelt down with a couple minutes left in the period pretending to go through my backpack in order to go over the plan with Derek discretely one final time.

“Ok, you good?” I asked Derek kneeling down without looking at him.

“Yea.” I heard Derek reply.

“We’re almost at the point of no return man, you sure you’re ok with this?” I was strongly hoping he would reconsider since this was primarily my plan.

“Nah, we got this.” Derek was locked into our mission.

“Ok, don’t get up until I signal you. I won’t give the signal until Senora is in the other classroom. I’ll be the last one out of the room and will knock on the window if you have to take cover again for any reason. Other than that, just grab a scan tron and get out of here quick.”

“K, cool.” We were ready.

The bell rings, and everyone started filing out of the classroom. I was nervous but focused and still a bit stunned at how hidden Derek remained. There was no way anyone could see him back there. I fidgeted with my folders, backpack, anything and everything so that I could be the last person walking out of that class. I was the second to last person out, as Senora held the door for all of us to be sure the classroom was indeed empty. Once seemingly vacant she gave her usual quick scan of things and walked out with the door shutting behind her.

“Heh, that really was easy.” I thought to myself. But my job wasn’t done. I safely tailed Senora for about 25 yards away from the class between the columns of classrooms to our left and right. I was just getting ready to turn back and signal Derek when it happened.

“Senora!” a skater girl named Britney came racing over to our teacher. “I forgot that we weren’t coming back for your final until after lunch and left my bag in your room.”

“Oh shit!” I almost said it while thinking it.

“Oh its ok Britney, lets go get it.” How nice of Senora V.

They both walked right by me and I walked directly behind both of them. About a minute had passed since the door had shut to the classroom with Derek left by himself in there and the time the three of us got back for Senora to reopen the classroom.

On the walk back my mind began racing, “Well, I haven’t given him a signal, but what if he panicked? What if he just got up after thirty seconds and gets caught in the act? This could be all bad.”

Senora V inserted her keys swiftly, Britney was ready to storm in and as Senora shoved downward the door handle I desperately declared, “Senora!”

She turned and looked at me as she opened the door and wouldn’t you know…. as she looked at me all I saw was Derek standing in the classroom doorway, scan tron in hand, stunned and jaw-dropped while mouthing an “ef bomb.” I can only imagine what my face must have looked like that caused Senora to ask me with a puzzled tone, “Jordan, is everything ok? Whats wrong?”

I gathered myself instantly and responded as smugly as possible making the most direct eye contact possible, “Ah, I don’t know, I think I’m just nervous about the final (please note the ironic truth in this answer)” Derek had done a reverse pivot out of Britney’s way and out of my sight. I knew Britney went into the class, and she must have seen Derek so it was obvious we would be at her mercy. The only thing I could try to manipulate was where my teacher was looking.

“Well did you study?” Senora asked.

“Yea, but I don’t know, I just never do any good on your tests.” Another honest statement.

“Oh don’t worry Senor Jordan, I’m sure you will do fine.” I doubt she actually believed this, but I guess it was the only encouraging thing she could tell me at this point.

“Yea. I think you’re right. Ok. Well, thanks Senora.” It was time for me to cash out while I was still ahead but I was imploring to God in that moment that Senora would NOT walk into that classroom because there is no way Derek could have hidden himself again that quickly.

“See you later!” Senora smiled, broke eye contact, and walked directly into the classroom. I turned around and immediately became a dead man walking.