Into the Woods

The only thing standing between me and a perfectly executed faux sick day was...a cake

- JULIA MAY JONAS

I still love romance and amethyst jewelry and staring at the sun reflecting on bodies of water from a car window. I still love Stephen Sondheim and compliments and the recitatives in Handel’s Messiah. But if there’s one great longing that rises above the rest and connects me to who I truly was between the tender ages of 10 to 13, it is my love of playing hooky.

Taking a day off as an adult can connote responsibility. Doctors appointments. Cleaning out your closet. Or it can suggest fun—going to the beach or a movie, spending time with your partner or kids. These are worthwhile activities, but they are not what I mean. I am referring specifically to the exquisite pleasure of staying home when everybody else in your household is gone. I am referring to that gorgeous, uninterrupted solitude, that blissful pause in the churning busyness of everyday life.

This story concerns such a day. I was 11, and in the past year I’d discovered a foolproof tactic to get me out of school. Desperate for that pause from the routine, that sense of stolen time, I developed a way of appearing undeniably sick, and did it frequently enough so that neither of my parents could miss any more work to stay home with me.

That day, after everyone had left, I settled onto the couch, inappropriate snacks in a bowl, inappropriate television on the screen, my dog, Lisa (who I wanted to call Isobel but came with her name), curled on my lap. It was the dawn of expanded cable, and during the commercials for Divorce Court I flipped around, eventually landing on one of the new channels that, at the time, was considered so niche that people made jokes about it. The Food Network.