Madam: Take a deep breath and step away from the school doors

You know, my own high school years were nothing I would ever want to repeat. They weren't horrific, mind, but they certainly were not frothy with intellectual rigor or lighthearted bonhomie. Maybe, if more people had had that kind of experience, they wouldn't try to do this:

GREEN BAY, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman who enrolled in high school under her daughter's name and tried out for the cheerleading squad has been committed to a mental health facility for three years.

Wendy Brown was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to a charge of identity theft. The 34-year-old woman apologized Tuesday in court.

Records show Brown attended one day of classes last August at Ashwaubenon High School and practiced with the cheerleading squad while posing as her 15-year-old daughter, who was living with a relative out of state.

Investigators learned her true identity after she was reported as truant and found that she had been jailed in a forgery case. Brown told investigators she wanted to relive her high school experience.

Jeez, lady. I guess she wanted to relive that high school experience since, if my calculations are correct, a 34-year-old woman with a fifteen-year-old daughter would probably have gotten pregnant with said daughter in high school. But I'm just guessing here. (I mean, I remember the first time I had a parent who was younger than I was. I was twenty-seven. She was twenty-six. And her kid was almost fourteen. That was a surprise.)

Of course, I've also seen some students who LOOKED like they were thirty-four, and they were the envy of their peers, if only because they were never carded.

And there was that instance in which an overage student claimed homelessness to get around the lack of paperwork so that he could ply his trade in illicit retail sales of herbs within the hallowed halls of academe. But that's a different story....