Writing Club - Your Parents Stories Retold

Reverse Psychology

by

Samantha Weber



Is that all you want? The clerk asked
Yes, that will be all. I calmly answered (although in the inside I was shaking)

It was a Saturday afternoon and my friend Jerri Lee, and I were buying cigarettes for the first time. We had gone across town so that no one would recognize us buying cigarettes. Only being 12 years old, we both new that our parents would not approve of us smoking, so we hid the box of cigarettes in a Q-Tip box and put that in the deepest pocket of our soft black leather purses. As we nervously walked down the sidewalk we started to jibber jabber about how easy it was to buy the cigarettes, and how the clerk was so clueless, and of course how we acted like 18 year olds. Our chatter was interrupted when we got to her house and walked inside. We immediately ran upstairs so that we could not be stopped by her mother with cigarettes in our purses. When we finally came downstairs her mother asked me to stay for dinner, which I politely excepted. After dinner I rushed home to watch Pinky Lee, I Love Lucy, and Jackie Gleason on TV. Once I was finished watching TV I went right to bed because I had to get up for church in the morning.

I woke up to the sun shining in my face, and got out of bed. Dressed in a blue straight skirt and a red cardigan sweater plus my cool bobby socks and penny loafers I walked downstairs and down the street to Jerri Lee's house to walk to church with her. After singing in the choir and listening to the pastor preach for and hour about loving your neighbors we walked back with our black purses hanging on our shoulders. We both went inside her house to listen to American Band Stand on Jerri Lee's pink High Fi. On the way upstairs we heard her mother doing dishes in the kitchen as we dropped our purses on her couch in front of Jerri Lee's little sister Darlene. Out of the clear blue Darlene grabbed my purse stuck her chubby little hand down in my purse and pulled out the Q-Tip box with the cigarettes in it and ran an gave it to her mother. Her mother opened up the box and found my cigarettes. Angry she chased me out of the house and told me that I better get back to my house and tell my mother that I was smoking before the phone rang. Huffing and Puffing I ran upstairs flung open my mother's bedroom door, jumped onto the bed and woke up my mother and told her that I was smoking. Much to my surprise she calmly answered that if I wanted to smoke that was fine, and to just stay away from mary janes. Although I had the approval of my mother, I never smoked again! That was when I was first introduced to reverse psychology.