Reverse Psychology

A Writing Club Assignment from Winter 2004. The assignment was to retell in the first person a personal story involving one of your parents.

By Samantha Weber



"Is that all you want?" the clerk asked.

"Yes, that will be all," I calmly answered (although on 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. Being only 12 years old, we both knew that what we were doing what was against the law and our parents would definitely not approve either; so we hid the package of cigarettes in a Q-Tip box and put that in the deepest pocket of our identical, 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 ,how the clerk was so clueless, and, of course, how we acted like 18 year olds. When we reached her house I said goodbye so I could go home and watch my favorite shows, Pinky Lee, I Love Lucy, and Jackie Gleason, on TV. Once I was finished watching TV, I ate a quick dinner and went upstairs 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, out the door, 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 about loving your neighbors, we walked back with our black purses hanging on our shoulders. We both went inside her house to listen to a new 45 of You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog on Jerri Lee's new pink High Fi. On the way upstairs we heard her mother doing dishes in the kitchen as we unthinkingly dropped our purses on her couch. Jerri Lee's little sister, Darlene, out of the clear blue, grabbed my purse, stuck her chubby little hand down in it, and pulled out the Q-Tip box and ran and gave it to her mother. Her mother was shocked to find: Cigarettes! Angrily, she chased me out of the house and told me that I better "hot-foot it get home" and tell my mother that I was smoking before the phone rang and she told her!. Huffing and puffing, I ran up my stairs, flung open my mother's bedroom door, jumped onto the bed, woke her up, and told her the sad truth: I smoked cigarettes! Much to my surprise, she calmly answered that if I wanted to smoke, that was fine, and to just stay away from Mary Janes (marijuana). Although I had the approval of my mother, I never smoked again! That was when I was first introduced to reverse psychology.