ONE OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS I EVER DID ( BUT NOT THE LAST )

I was working the saturday 7-3 on the girls unit for overtime. We had been out for morning activity, which, coincidentally, was near where I was living. I had plans for after work that involved weed, which I had forgotten at my house that morning.
Did I wait until after work to go get my weed? No.
Did I go to my house with a van full of emotionally disturbed teenaged girls and run inside to "get my backpack"? Yes.
Was I stupid enough to think that said girls wouldn't wonder what was so important about that back pack that I had to make us late for lunch to retrieve it? Yes again.
Was I stricken with terror when we returned from lunch to find my back pack in the day room instead of the office, rifled through and the weed missing? Damn right I was.
And what did I do?
I gathered all the girls in the day room and explained that something had been taken from my back pack and they had 15 minutes to return it to said back pack, no questions asked.
Did they? Fuck no.
Did I really believe they would give back a fat bag of primo weed? I was hoping against hope they would. ( remember the boundary thing I mentioned yesterday?)
I had inadvertently provided drugs to the entire population of the girls unit in a treatment center, did I just keep my mouth shut? The cat was out of the bag.
I may have been incredibly stupid, but I was honest.
I called the director and told him what was up, I informed the senior staff on duty what was up. I got in my car and drove away. I quit. I was embarrassed, humiliated...I kept thinking about the opening credits to an old TV western "Branded" starring Chuck Connors where they drum him out of the calvary and rub it in by breaking his sword in half and throw it over the walls of the fort as a final insult before they kick him out the gates.
I promised myself that something like this would NEVER EVER happen again. In fact, there were lots of things that happened there that I promised I would never let happen again, and for the most part, I've kept that promise.
I was also midway through my first semester of nursing school, my lab partner in anatomy and physiology worked at another, larger, for profit treatment center and they had an opening on her unit. She hooked me up with her boss, he hired me.
And that was the start of the most amazing adventure I had ever been on. I would be there for 14 years when it was all said and done.