Back in 2012, Rachel Gelmis, then a high-school student, was subjected to a drug test at her Alabama school. (Drug testing was optional at her school, Gelmis told Select All, with parental consent.) At the time, Gelmis says she was taking a few prescribed medications and expected those to be the only drugs found in her system. Except, when the school got her test results, that wasn’t what happened.
“I got called into the office a while later, and I was confronted by all the school administrators and they said I tested positive for almost everything (except [the prescribed medication], which I was actually on)”, Gelmis, who is now 20, explained via Twitter DM. Her parents were called and her mother came to the school to pick Gelmis up and take her home. “On the way home, she [her mother] was crying and she said she asked them to do the drug test because she was worried about me and thought I was acting weird.”
When they got home, her parents started looking up rehab facilities. Until, that is, the school called her parents a second time, this time with slightly better news. “A few hours later, the school called my mom and told her they misread the test,” Gelmis said. “They said lines were supposed to show up a certain way to indicate which drugs are in your system and they just read it the wrong way.” Apologetic, her mother asked if there was anything she could to to make it up to her daughter. Gelmis said she wanted a cake.
“It really wasn’t her fault — she was just worried about me,” Gelmis said, explaining that the bungled test and subsequent cake have become something of a family joke in the years since. “We talk about it a lot. I like to give her a hard time.”
