The FBI's Ugly History Led to Donald Trump

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·RELATED QUESTION

What is the one core personality trait that you had as a child and still have as an adult? Something that has not been touched or changed by time?

We got to tape our school principal to a flagpole.

The rule? For every point you improved on your yearly exam, you got an inch of tape.

I was good at exams. I normally scored 15, 20 points higher than my classmates.

So I sat my little butt down in the computer lab chair and focused all my brain power on getting questions right.

A few weeks later, the results came in.

I'd grown 13 points since the last year.

13 points? That's over a foot of tape!

I don't know why I thought that more tape = more fun, but I was thrilled to see that number on my score card.

That afternoon, we lined up alphabetically at the front door to get our tape.

Being a Yates, I waited at the very end of the line.

I couldn't contain myself.

A whole f*cking foot of tape.

This was it.

She gets through the Andersons, the Jones, the Phillips, the Williams.

And finally, when I step up to the teacher at the front—

She rips off a six inch strip of tape and sticks it to my palm.

I look down.

I try to visualize what a foot of tape should look like.

I conclude that this is not a foot of tape.

I tell my friends and they don't seem too concerned — I soon realize that one of them got more tape than they were even supposed to. Why was no one else rioting? Why did they all seem fine with this setup?

I throw up my hand.

"Mrs. A! You said we'd get tape based on how we did on the test."

But without a word, she shuffles us out the door.

I spent the rest of the day nagged by this feeling of wrongness.

Was it a little unnecessary for the teacher to measure out 30-some strips of tape? Probably.

But a promise is a promise.

She said I'd get a foot of tape, so I should've gotten a foot of tape.

Inconsequential? Absolutely.

So why did it stick with me for all these years?

Like my mother, I have a deep sense of justice. Of right and wrong.

I firmly believe that agreements must be kept.

That commitments should not be ignored.

That rules should be just, and if they aren't just, they should be struck down.

It's one of the most basic guiding forces of how I live my life — even at the smallest level.

And while 10-year-old me never got her foot of tape…

She had the grim satisfaction of taping her principal to a metal flagpole—

Right before a thunderstorm.