“This is going on your permanent record!"
For as long as I can remember, the threat of a permanent record was enough to scare any school aged child into submission. It was the idea of something that would hold weight over our heads for the rest of our lives. Everywhere we went after school was over — college, the workforce, the police — everyone would have a copy of these records, and would know of all the horrible misdeeds we had done.
Of course, these misdeeds were as simple as forgetting to bring a hall pass with you when you needed to use the restroom, or using your outside voice when you were clearly no longer at recess.
Still, I've been waiting my entire life for the moment someone will say that I look good on paper, but there's a problem with what they're reading in in my permanent record.
I was never a bad child, to be honest. I got into some mischief like everyone else, but I tried my hardest to be the model student. I scored straight A's, excitedly waited for my turn to be the teacher's helper, and never once did anything to cause someone else a headache.
Well, unless you're counting that little incident on the playground in pre-k, but we won't go there.
By all rights, I was a great student. But teachers still made me believe in my permanent record. I'm sure anyone else can attest to this monstrosity as well; it was more than a tool of terror, it actually made us believe that there was some type of higher power, higher than our parents themselves, that could ruin our lives.
From one thing written on your permanent record, your life would be downhill. Jail would be in store by the time you hit the third grade, and you could forget about ever getting dessert packed in your lunchbox again. By fifth grade, you'd have dropped out of school, and you'd graffiti the entire classroom with the worst of the smelly markers so that it would permeate for the new classes to come.
Of course, imagination is a powerful tool.
A few days ago, I got bored and decided to do some research. What was a permanent record anyway? Did I even have one? If they existed, were they actually the monsters that our teachers had made them out to be, the ones we hid under beds from?
In short, no, they aren't.
In fact, this may come as a shock to most of you, but permanent records really don't exist.
At least, not in the form we know it as.
Yes, there were school records kept on us while we were students. But most of these were those boring forms your parents filled out; doctor's visits, full names, shot records, allergies and medications. If you got into trouble often, or had attendance issues, there may have been a note of that on these forms. As soon as we were no longer students, most of these were shredded, and if they weren't done so immediately, by now they're surely gone.
So, in short, my permanent record was never really there. It was just something said to keep me in line. No one is going to ever give you an earful because you jumped out and scared your teacher once, or that once, when they were late, you sat behind their desk and proclaimed yourself the new teacher.
If you were ever worried, rest assured now friends... You're safe.
