Exception

The five and dime
Got Mexican Jumping Beans
And I bought some
And I liked them
And I bought some more
And I stole some
And I bought and stole
Even more

I dissected them
And I found the worm
And then I got bored
And I boiled them all
I bought and stole
And dissected
And boiled them all

At school we sold
Cases of oranges
As a fundraiser for grade five camp
I ate cases and cases
Of oranges
I ate so many oranges

I had orange peels
Under my fingernails
And my fingernails were all pulled back
From peeling all those oranges
And I was peeing all the time

Our cabin leader
Was a teenager
Who had a knife on his leather belt
And the leather of the knife cover
Didn't fully cover
The knife's tip

So when he wrestled with us
Fifth graders
All over the cabin's floor
He scratched us all
And the school staff
Kept the knife for the rest of trip

Everyone got stung by the
Stinging nettles
Growing beside our cabin
But I pretended not to feel a thing
I even stepped back into them
Laughing

While the skin bubbled up
Up and down my legs
Just like the skin bubbling up
Up and down everyone else's legs

Yeah, the skin was bubbling up
Up and down my legs
Just like the skin bubbling up
Up and down everyone else's legs

My teacher asked me
If I'd be alright being
In a cabin with my friend Joe
Even though most kids
Were put in cabins
With kids that they didn't know

Unless he could be in a cabin with me
My teacher told me
Joe refused to go
Poor Joe
When he froze in front of class
During show and tell
And ran out crying
My teacher let me run after him

My cabin played
Truth or dare
I can't remember if
I initiated it
But it wouldn't surprise me
If I had

I chose truth
And was asked if I'd had
Sex with a girl
And when it came round to me again
Joe asked who the girl
Was

I protested that truth or dare
Was about yes or no, not
Who
But they took a vote
And I was out-voted
So I answered
With the truth

No one else said
They'd had sex with a girl
When they were asked to tell the truth
Not even the teenager who had
Scarred us all
With his knife

On the bus trip
Back down the mountain
I was sitting next to Joe
With my eyes closed
Drifting in and out of sleep
When I heard him tell someone
That I'd said
I'd had sex with a girl

And, like Joe, they asked which girl
I'd had sex with
And
He told them
There were giggles everywhere
The girl I'd played sex games with
Was on
The bus too

I knew there was no chance
That the news
Wouldn't get back
To her

I kept my eyes closed
Pretending to sleep
Until I was the last person on the bus
And my teacher came to
Wake me up
Yeah, my teacher came to
Wake me up

I spotted Joe in the bike racks
I waited until no one was looking
I pinched the back of his neck
To incapacitate him
And then I punched him in the gut
As hard as I could

He didn't yell for help
He didn't tell on me
He just
Slinked away

He and his divorced mother
Were moving back to England
That summer
Anyway

I didn't just cross him out of my phone book
Like most people
I cut him out
And burned him
And never saw him again