I could write volumes about the subject of “getting in trouble”
during our school years. This missive will touch on a (very) few
instances of Tim and I getting “swatted” with a paddle and “getting detention”.
(I know it’s hard to imagine either one of us ever getting in
trouble in school)! Tim and I were
reminiscing about all the fun we had while we were serving “detention” when we
were in high school. Before I cover the subject of detention, I shall cover the
subject of “getting paddled”. During our 8th Grade Graduation, Tim
got an award for getting “the most swats” of anyone in the entire 8th grade
that year! By the way, this should once and for all put to rest the notion that
neither Tim nor I ever applied ourselves in Public School! Tim came across the
lawn to to his daily web checks on my fast computer with the LAN Internet
connection at 100 Megs per second! I was as usual saying how cold I was on this
Jan. night. He said don’t you wear “long underwear”? (In those days we called
it “Thermal Underwear”). Nah, I rarely
ever have. Tim started wearing it in the 7th grade. He didn’t start
off wearing it to keep warm, but to insulate him from getting “swats”. Whenever
we didn’t have our homework completed for Mr. Cranston, he would give us a few
“swats” with the paddle. Well, it seems at this point in his life, Tim had
higher priorities most of the time than homework completion; hence, he would
usually receive almost daily “swats” from Mr. Cranston. Tim never seemed to
mind the swats, because when he didn’t feel like doing homework, he would wear
the bottoms from his “thermal” long underwear. They were thick cotton and could
absorb most, if not all, of the sting. One day as we were getting dressed after
a phys. ed. class, Mr. Cranston discovered Tim’s long underwear bottoms. He
said “AHAAAAAA”! I think the one thing that gave it away was that Tim had
gotten a few “swats” from Mr. Cranston earlier that day and also that it was
September or early October. He figured it out immediately! The “jig was up”! Henceforth,
before Tim got “swats” from Mr. Cranston, he had to go to the restroom and
remove his long underwear bottoms! I never thought about doing that since even
then I didn’t like to wear long underwear, and still don’t. Now, as to the
subject of detention. How could we have
fun at “detention”? Wellllllll… For one thing, when we would get a 1-hour
detention for talking in class and/or study hall, we found ways to have fun
whenever no teacher was watching us. Most teachers who gave detention would not
spend the whole hour watching us, and at times I figured once we were in
whatever empty classroom they chose for detention, that they would leave and go
home or whatever teachers did when they left school. If we were fortunate
enough to get the biology lab to serve our detention, we knew as soon as the
teacher left that we were in for an hour of fun! Sometimes we would grab a big
vial of mercury that had a cork on the top and pour some out on the desk and
roll it around. However, the first thing we did with mercury was to shine all
of our silver coins, if we had any. When you dip a quarter in mercury, it gives
it an instant shine! Other times we would find the copper sulfate and soak
stuff in it to give it a copper coating. I’m sure it befuddled Mr. Sanders, the
biology teacher, why some of the lab instruments were all of a sudden copper
coated! (HEE HEE). It’s really amusing to both Tim and I that these days
whenever there’s a “Mercury Spill” of a few drops on a school bus or at school,
or most recently from a thermostat (which had a very small amount of mercury, they
close the whole place down and spend thousands of dollars to “decontaminate”
the whole area! Heck, we used to play with mercury and both of us are fine! We
both still have 10 fingers (4 on the right hand and 6 on the left). The
liberals have created a whole generation of sissies! I… I’d better not get on that
subject on one of my (im)famous “sidetracks”… If we were caught talking in
class and given a one hour detention for that, many times we would have to
write on the blackboard “I will not talk in class” or “I will not chew gum in
class”, etc. If we were fortunate enough in those cases to serve our detention
in the music room, as soon as we started to write the phrase on the board and
the teacher left, we would grab the “Staff Maker” chalk holder (see sketch
below). Since this held 5 pieces of chalk, we would use that to write 5
sentences at once and finish in 1/5 the time! If there were not a “Staff Maker”
chalk holder”, then we would put 2 pieces of chalk in our hand and finish the
100 sentences twice as fast. Although it occurred to me several times, I never
just wrote one sentence and put 99 sets of ditto marks! Even I wasn’t that
gutsy in those days! I suppose that in today’s public schools it’s illegal to
serve detention. Too bad that the kids these are missing out on so much FUN!
