“(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.

“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. 🙂