One of these reminded me of how much I hated school... ...I will tell you why.→[More:]

So, in second grade our teacher posed the hypothetical question to our class, "How would you like to die?" Most people answered the way they were supposed to with either "in my sleep" or "with my family there so i could say goodbye." I, on the other hand, embraced the absurdity of the thought experiment and created a grandiose fiction of being impaled by a collapsed dinosaur skeleton. (This was before that was even remotely a hip thing.) As I finished my plan for death, I remember thinking to myself in child thoughts "fuck yeah, that is a masterful way to die."

My teacher read my answer (accompanied with drawing of me, in pith helmet, wrecked by aforementioned tragedy) and I remember her being aghast and dismayed; she wore it on her face quite plainly. "Why!?"

"Oh shit," I thought in child thoughts, "Cover." And so I said as proudly as I could muster, "So I would die doing something that I loved." I knew it was close to the right answers and maybe, just maybe I could win this battle of hypothetics.

"Wouldn't you just want to die in your sleep? That wouldn't be so painful. I'd want to die in my sleep."

"No, bitch! I want an enormous rib to splinter my rib cage while a resin-coated lizard skull grimaces at the bloody mess! I told you what I'd want!" is how my child thoughts would be interpreted to the mature, modern adult.

"Okay. In my sleep." is what I ended up saying.

And, I'm pretty sure she shook her head as she walked to the next kid's desk.