We Should Have Gotten One Wrong

I was in ninth grade when a few of my friends and I came up with what we genuinely believed was a brilliant plan.

We were going to steal the final exam.

This was back when I was growing up in India. None of us were particularly gifted students. Actually, that's being generous.

The passing grade was 34 out of 100.

Most of us had perfected the art of getting somewhere around 34.

Not 60. Not 50.

Thirty-four.

We weren't trying to excel. We were trying to survive.

Then one of us had an idea.

Instead of studying for the final exams, why not just steal them?

To a group of ninth-grade boys, this apparently sounded easier than opening our textbooks.

The exams were kept inside a vault at school, so we started planning. And when I say planning, I mean we took this very seriously.

Every evening we'd stay late playing on the school playground while secretly watching the school guard.

He was an older man who lived on the property and liked to drink. We figured out when he ate, when he went back to his quarters and when the school grounds were usually empty.

We knew his routine better than we knew our schoolwork. Eventually, we somehow managed to get hold of his keys long enough to make copies of the ones we thought we'd need. Looking back, the amount of effort we put into avoiding studying was incredible.

Finally, the night came.

Around midnight, we met near the school.

We climbed over the wall and dropped onto the property.

So far, everything was going exactly according to plan.

There was just one small detail our criminal mastermind committee had forgotten.

The guard had a dog.

The moment we reached the main corridor, the dog started going crazy.

Barking. Loudly.

Immediately, a flashlight appeared in the distance.

The guard was awake.

We ran behind a wall and squeezed ourselves together, trying not to make a sound.

I remember standing there thinking that my life was over.

Forget the exam. Forget passing ninth grade. I was going to die behind this wall.

The guard walked around shining his flashlight into the darkness.

Somehow, he didn't see us.

Eventually, he went back to his quarters.

We waited.

Then we actually continued with the plan.

And unbelievably...

"It worked."

We got the exam.

We escaped.

Nobody caught us.

For a brief moment, we were legends.

There was only one problem.

We were idiots.

When exam day came, every one of us knew every answer.

So naturally, every one of us answered every question correctly.

We all got:

100 out of 100.

This might have been believable if we had been good students.

We weren't.

These teachers had been watching us struggle to get 34 for years.

Imagine being a teacher and suddenly the same group of boys who could barely pass your class all become geniuses at exactly the same time. Not 70. Not 82. Not even 95.

One hundred.

All of us.

Apparently, not one person in our group had the intelligence to say, "Guys, maybe we should get a few wrong."

The teachers immediately knew something was wrong.

An investigation started. It didn't take long. We got caught.

They threw out our exam results and made us take the exams again.

This time, unfortunately, we didn't have the answers.

We failed.

I don't remember exactly what punishment each of us received afterward.

What I remember clearly is that evening. We all got together.

Someone finally said what none of us had thought of before.

"We should have gotten one wrong."

That was it.

We completely lost it.

We laughed until we couldn't breathe.

Months of planning. Watching the guard. Getting his keys. Making copies. Climbing the school wall at midnight. Nearly getting caught because of the dog. Hiding from a flashlight. Getting into the vault. Stealing the exam. Getting back out.

We had successfully completed every difficult part of the plan.

And then we got caught because none of us was smart enough to get a question wrong.

I'm 43 now.

I haven't spoken to some of those boys in years. Life took all of us in different directions.

But every once in a while, I think about that night.

And I can still see a bunch of terrified ninth graders pressed against a wall in the dark while an old man walked around with a flashlight and his dog barked somewhere nearby.

At fourteen, we thought we had pulled off the greatest exam heist in history.

Turns out we were exactly as smart as our grades suggested.