I can’t remember exactly what he said, but he chewed me out for the “sin” of what the Navy years later called, “unwarranted assumption of authority.” In short, that I as a first grade STUDENT had no shred of authority to send a fellow student home…safe from Mrs. Stephen’s ruler.

I probably tried to explain that I hadn’t actually told my classmate to go home, only agreed with him that if he felt he should go home, that he probably should.  My “lawyerly” explanation might have gotten me off the hook for any corporal punishment—a dreaded outcome for most trips to The Principal’s Office—but it didn’t save me from THE NOTE!

It took Mr. Loundsberry several weeks, at least, as Time was almost freeze-framed for this miscreant, to pen a two-sentence note to my parents that condensed my misbegotten advice into misbehavior, and suggested that they come see him to discuss my uncertain, if not blighted future.

When he shoved The Note across his desk and glared at me over his old fashioned reading glasses, it might well have been a scene from a British movie where the judge in passing the death sentence puts a black handkerchief over his head and orders the Bailiff to, “Take his man down.” Down to the dank cellblock and soon out to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn and quartered…well, hanged at least.

In my case, I knew immediately in my quaking heart that it would mean the “death sentence”—if that damning note ever got to my father. I wasn’t sure what unforgivable sin I had committed, but I knew what the consequences would be if my father got wind of the fact that his son had “been sent to the Principal’s Office.”

I spent the rest of the “month”–until the end of that class day–in a daze of impending doom. What in the world had I done that was so awful it had brought about a trip to old Mr. Loundsberry and a note for the executioner at home?

© Tracy D. Connors 2015 All Rights Reserved