when class resumed.
“Miss,” they started, “the whole class wants to apologize for the pencils.”
“We’re all in on it and we’re sorry. We plan to make up for it by raising extra money for the poor this month.”
“Well, that’s great,” the teacher said. “I’m very pleased with you for owning up to it. You don’t have to stay in at recess tomorrow, but we will talk more about raising money for the poor.”
We were dumbfounded. We had never seen anything like it. We had never seen such a simple unravelling of a serious problem before. “Who knew it would turn out that way?” we said to each other.
“We didn’t even get the strap.”
IV—BOOTS BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The guys had been throwing snowballs at first recess that day. This put the teacher in a poor mood. One of the snowballs had ice in it. It had struck a student in the other class on the back of the head, causing a golf ball sized lump to develop. Fortunately, the target of the snowball attack was recovering well. Otherwise, the teacher would have been in an even poorer mood. As it was, however, her tolerance for foolishness was low that day.
Our class was composed of Grade Three and Grade Four students. The teacher had started the morning class teaching the Grade Four students. The Grade Three students were given desk work to do. We would be given an open book quiz that would be taken up in class after the teacher had finished with the Grade Four class. The quiz would involve explanations on how to add triple-digit numbers, which still puzzled us at times.
“Throw me your eraser,” I said to Jim, anxious to erase the obvious errors I had made on my assignment paper. Jim flipped the eraser to me without looking. I caught it and went to work erasing numbers on the page. I erased several of them vigorously, blew the residue off of the page and flipped the eraser back to Jim, landing it on the middle of his desk. All would have been fine, except that the eraser bounced and landed in the hole which had been cut in the desk, to hold an ink well.
Jim reached into the ink well hole with two fingers, but couldn’t reach the eraser.
“I can’t reach it,” Jim announced with a laugh. “Okay,” I said, as I got up from my seat.
I walked across the aisle to his desk, reached into the ink well hole, managed to get my entire hand into the hole, reached for the eraser, picked it up and went to remove my hand from the hole. I couldn’t get it out. I quickly released the eraser, wanting to hurry back to my seat. As I released it, I presumed my hand would slide out. I took a stride toward my desk. It all would have worked out fine, except that my hand didn’t slide out of the hole. As I strode away, I pulled Jim’s desk with me. This startled the class. They instantly laughed and made quite a commotion.
There was Jim sitting in his desk sideways across the aisle, with my hand stuck in the ink well slot. The teacher was not amused.
“Joe Byrne,” she started, “and Jim Mahon, stop fooling around. You are distracting the class.”
Our buddies in class feigned discontent. “I’m trying to do my assignment, Miss,” Pete called out for a joke.
“Me, too,” said Paul.
Of course, neither one had started working in earnest at all. They had kept up low level wise cracks in whispers with us all along.
As I frantically tugged at my hand, it finally released. I looked at it and tried to rub the red stress bruises from both sides of the hand. As I looked for sympathy the teacher strode to the back of the class, where we sat, strap in hand.
“Joe, Jim and Pete,” she commanded, “go and stand behind the curtain at the back of the class and I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”
Jim, Pete and I got up without saying a word, walked behind the curtain, wearing our rubber boots, which we had not taken off after recess. We stood together as the teacher closed the curtain in front of us.
None of us spoke for a while. Jim then made a brilliant observation.
“Look down,” he said to me and Pete. “What do you see?” There, the curtain hung to a distance of about eight inches above the floor. We were wearing 12-inch boots.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t you see?” he said. “We can leave our boots here, slide out the side door and play outside. The teacher will still think we’re back here because we’ll leave our boots standing here.”
“Brilliant,” I declared, “but we can’t just run out of here. We have to wait until she’s not looking toward the back of the class.”
“Move over slowly, to the break in the curtains,” Jim directed. We slid over, slowly, in baby steps, until we reached the break in the curtains. Jim peeked out, but the teacher was looking back as she taught the class.
“Wait a minute,” Jim said.
Finally, she got up to write something on the blackboard. “Paul,” we both called. Paul didn’t hear us.
“Paul,” we called again, as loud as we dared. Still, there was no answer.
But, Scott had heard us. He tapped Paul on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Scott whispered, “Jim wants you.” Paul looked back.
“Paul,” Jim said, “let us know when the coast is clear. We’re going to make a run for the side door.”
“Okay,” Paul said.
After a few moments, Paul said the magic word, “Now!”
Jim, Pete and I scrambled through the curtains, slid in our heavy wool socks toward the side door, at the back of the class, reached for the knob, quietly turned it and bolted to freedom. We stood on the porch for a moment, feeling like geniuses for being there. Then, without saying anything, we started playing marbles on the light fluffy snow, which had just fallen on the sidewalk. We played pots that day, shooting from about 1O feet away.
“There’s no ‘ping standers’ in pots,” I declared and for some reason, we all found the statement very funny.
We horsed around there for a few minutes, playing marbles on our knees, kneeling on the back of a little piece of plywood we had found in the ditch nearby. We had removed our wool socks from our feet and put them in our pockets to keep them dry. None of us gave any thought to how silly our accomplishment was.
By now, a buzz had gone through the class. The class members fidgeted excitedly, wondering when the teacher was going to catch on to the ruse.
Finally, someone blurted out, “Miss, I think they’ve stood behind the curtain long enough. It must be stuffy back there. I think you should let them return to their seats.” The class roared with laughter.
The teacher looked up, a look of surprise on her face, as though she had momentarily forgotten about us.
“You can come out now, boys,” she said finally. The boots didn’t move.
“You can come out now, boys,” she repeated. Still, nothing happened.
“I don’t think they can hear you back there,” Paul said, as the teacher started to the back of the class.
The teacher drew back the curtain in one swoop and said loudly, “You can come out now, boys,” but there was no reaction.
Next, the teacher looked inside the closet, saw we weren’t there, noticed the three pairs of boots standing there and asked the class, “Where did they go?”
But she knew. She strode over to the side door, opened it and was amazed to see her three prize students kneeling on the snow-covered sidewalk, playing marbles. She was good about it.
“Was it stuffy back there?” she asked giving us an out.