THE GOING STEADY BRACELET, NINTH GRADE

If you look close enough and use your imagination you can see the bracelet on Rhondas left wrist. No, not him. Way in the back back there. With the poodle looking hairdo.

I'll tell you about that bracelet. I went to Gibsons to get it. They had silver and gold. I couldnt decide, but ended up settling on the gold. No one, no one at all had a gold bracelet.
I got it home, and started having buyers remorse.
"Who buys a friggen' gold bracelet?" I thought. "She'll probably break up with me the minute she sees it. I'll be the laughing stock of Bedford Junior High"
So I put it in this wooden box on my dresser that I kept mercury from broken thermometers in, because mercury is cool stuff to play with. Matches are fun to play with too. If you take a big book full of matches, and keep it closed while you light one end, the flames will shoot out both ends when you light it. When you get the thermometer close enough to an open flame, the thermometer will crack in half. If you keep heating the mercury in the bulb, most of it will come out of the broken glass tube and you can collect it.
You just have to be careful, you know, not to cut yourself on the broken glass.

The next morning I opened the box and the gold bracelet wasnt gold anymore. It was just silvery metal, and not even shiny, and looked like it had been around for about 20 girlfriends, the silver plate all wore off.
And that is how I came to learn that mercury will eat gold plate off of jewelry, and Rhonda got a not-gold bracelet.