hockey cards, shuffled desks so that Sally’s was in Marjorie’s spot; Marjorie’s was in Charlie’s; Charlie’s was in Pete’s, and so on. We never even looked at Swanee River.
At noon hour, we resumed our unsupervised detentions in the classroom.
“Let’s sharpen pencils,” someone wise-owled.
“Great idea,” we replied as we made our way through the various desks, brought the pencils to the mechanical pencil sharpener and grinded away at them.
“Hey, guys,” Jim said partway through the noon hour, “let’s learn this thing and get out of here.”
We wanted to agree with him. We said things like, “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s learn it.” But we didn’t. We continued with the quiet mayhem, enjoying the sense of rebellion we were discovering.
The teacher came to the classroom about five minutes before the bell rang to mark the start of class.
“Is anyone ready to sing Swanee River yet?” she asked.
Jim put up his hand, his long hand, “I think I’m ready,” he replied, as he started to recite the song. To our surprise, he got through the whole thing.
“Good, Jim,” the teacher replied. “You’re free to go for the rest of the noon hour and for the afternoon recess.
The rest of us continued with the rebellion for a couple more days. One day, we found a whole bundle of pencils which had been left on the teacher’s desk. They were neatly wrapped with an elastic band, all of them brand new.
“Let’s sharpen them,” someone said.
“Good idea,” we all replied and got to work sharpening them. We pushed at each pencil until each one was sharpened as far down the pencil as possible, leaving short pencils, about two inches long. When we had finished the last one, we tried to bundle them and put them back where we had found them. We couldn’t bundle them with the elastic because the pencils were too short. After several tries at it, we decided we should glue them together with the white glue we had in our desks. The glue didn’t work either, so we made many small bundles with the elastic bands. We set them in the top drawer of the teacher’s desk. We thought we were heroes as we told Jim about it.
Jim listened quietly, then he said, “Come on, guys. Just learn the song so you can get out of here. Let’s build snow forts, or play ball or do something.” The next recess, we all studied hard.
“Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away,” we repeated over and over again.
When the teacher came in at the end of recess, four of us successfully got through it. One stumbled in the middle of it, but the teacher let him off the hook. We were free to go. Everything would have ended quietly that day, except that once class began, one of the students put up his hand.
“Miss,” he said, “I need a new pencil.”
“What happened to yours?” the teacher asked impatiently.
“Someone sharpened it too much,” he said as the class room filled with laughter.
“Come up here,” she replied.
As our buddy walked toward the teacher’s desk, she pulled open the drawer on the top, left side of her desk. She shrieked as she looked in to see the multiple bundles of short pencils.
“Who did this?” she asked. “Okay, then. You will all stay in at recess until you tell me who is responsible for this.”
We were right back in detention. It was the girls who bailed us out. One of them said, “Let’s all take the blame for it. That way, no one will get punished too severely.”
Naturally, we loved the plan. The girls and Jim were going to share in the blame even though they had nothing to do with the mischief. They were willing to take the blame for it to help us out. Donna and Jim acted as spokespersons 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.
