Tiffany Penney
May 10th 2006
Narrative paper
Bomb Threat
On September 7th, 2004 there was a bomb threat at Cony and the whole school had to walk up to the vocational school field. That was really bad because it was a really hot day, but what was worse was who did it. It was my best friend. He was at the golf range in Wellness 3 and he was showing off his new cell phone that he got the night before from his grandmother for a birthday present. He's always been the type to try to impress everyone and when one of his friends asked, "Hey can you call 911?" he goes, "I don't know" so he dialed it and hang up quick. He tried it one more time and just hung up and then the third time his friend goes "Hey, say you have a bomb at Cony" and he did. He says he was "dared" and he's "not the type to back down from a dare."
When we first heard of this I was in my first period English class with Ms Hardison. I was one of the stupid one who brought they're backpack with them thinking this wasn't too big of a deal. It took everyone at least 45 minutes to walk up to the field. When I got there, the first thing I did was I started looking for him but I couldn't find him for the life of me. I had all my friends looking for him too and people, (his friends) kept walking up to me asking where he was because, (duh!)... I was his best friend and I should know. I found out that his Mom was one of the many parents that day worried about their child's safety and was looking for him, that being the reason all of his other friends kept asking me if I knew where he was.
His Mom was a bus driver then and heard over her radio that there was a bomb threat and everyone was at the vo-tech so she drove up there looking for him. (In her car, not the bus.) It ends up that because he was in Wellness class he got a bus ride up to the vo-tech so he was late getting there.
Standing in the field with him and his mother he told our other best friend something in a whisper. I ask what he's saying and he says he'll tell me later when I get home. I kind of have a big mouth and he knows it. Plus I probably would have started crying right there and gave it away and he knew that too. We know each other very well. His Mom asked me if I wanted her to tell my Mom because only parents could come get you but at the time my mother had a broken foot and couldn't have come gotten me anyway. I wasn't scared, I knew it was all fake, it always is. His mother ended up driving him home, which meant that not only did he not have to walk up, but he didn't have to walk down either. I ended up walking both ways and that was annoying. I walked up with my two of my friends and walked down with like five of my friends. One of the boys I was walking down with told me, “Tiffy, I'm gonna tell you a secret, it was me" he says, and I was like “no it was a Freshman, who didn't want their picture taken” because it happened on picture day.
I didn't think it could be one of my friends because I didn't think my friends were that dumb but then again, I was sort of friends with the kid who brought the cherry bombs to Buker in 8th grade. While we were walking down we saw a girl pass out from heat exhaustion. The boy who had joked that he had done it made fun of her. When we got back to school I think it was lunchtime, so I went to the cafe' still oblivious to the fact that it was my best friend that was the idiot who called in the bomb threat. I joked right along with everyone else about how the person was so dumb and a loser and it was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day. That is until a little later in the day when another bomb threat was called in.
The second bomb threat was also done by someone I knew, a sister of one of my friends. We all got dismissed so I had to walk home too. Her and three of her friends had gone to someone's house after the first threat and thought it would be funny if there were another one the same day or something.
When I got home, I went to see him. At first he wouldn't tell me because I had another friend with me, but once she went home he told me it was him. I was one of the first two friends he told. First he told our other best friend and then he told me next. He told me that if I told anybody he would never speak to me again, ever! People on my AOL kept asking me was it him? I had to lie to even my best girl/friend at the time and say it wasn't. I even had to lie to my parents at first. We had planed to do so much better that year because we had both messed up pretty bad the last year and he messed it all up. He was going to help me out with my math and I was going to help him in English. I still made him help me with my math. It was kind of funny though because his Mom told him to find the person who did it and “beat his ass” and he was like “um... Mom.” This all happened 7 days before his 16th birthday, because like I said, the cell phone was a birthday present. It didn't even have any minuets on it. It was really a tracfone without minutes so the only number they could call was 911.
The day after the "bombfest" as my English teacher that year called it, I skipped the day to spend it with him to show him I still loved him even if he was an idiot. The next day I went to school and I had to get my schedule all changed around so that I wouldn't have to go to Current Events knowing that he was supposed to be in that class with me. I felt really bad about it for the next week or so and he ended up just staying home all day and playing video games.
He asked me if he goes to jail will I write to him and I was like of course. But he didn't end up going to jail, at least not real jail. He was put in Charleston for 48 hours once because he failed one of his drug tests. When the bomb threat happened he was already on probation (he took all the blame for him and a bunch of his friends beating up on an old car) but he got put on drug court too. He had to do community service for 3 months and his cell phone was taken away (he still hasn't gotten it back yet). He had to go to AA meetings even though he's not an alcoholic and he had to take a drug test every Thursday. He also had a 5pm curfew and had been put on house arrest 3 times. He couldn’t enroll in any high school in Maine, public or private. They wouldn't even take him at the Goodwill/Hinckley school because he's not stupid or anything. He's actually very intelligent if you can believe that. He's especially good with numbers.
His mother signed him into state’s custody in March ‘05 and from there he stayed in various group homes around the state until January ‘O6 when he set out on his own. Now he is living in Houlton, Maine; has his own apartment that he shares with his younger brother, and is going to a branch of UMA studying business management and wants to go into real estate. He has really set his life back on track after getting himself in so deep and I am really proud of him.
Anyway, I don't think any of this compares to the whole stabbing thing that happened last year. When comparing a fake bomb threat to a real stabbing, I would rather go with the fake bomb threat; at least no one was really hurt.
