Second Grade Trouble

Second Grade Trouble

Noel Laflin

10-21-14

The final bell rang – lunch was over.  My best friend, Gary Dix, and I ran back to the classroom and took our usual seats in the back of the room.  We were still snickering just a bit.  We had been up to no good obviously.

And before you could even say ‘Uh-oh, I told you so,’ Pricilla’s pretty little hand shot straight into the air.

“Miss Davang,” she announced for the entire second grade class to hear, “Noel and Gary have firecrackers!”

Unfortunately for Gary and me, she was right.

“Noel, Gary, please come to the front of the class and see me,” Miss Davang responded coolly.

“I saw Noel selling them to Gary at lunch time,” the little snitch added, smirking from the safety of her seat.  Her father was the Anaheim Union School District’s Superintendent of Education.  I bet she’d have something to brag about at dinner tonight, I thought dimly, as I made my way to Miss Davang’s desk at the head of the classroom.

“Boys,” Miss Davang began, “Did I understand Pricilla correctly – do you have firecrackers here at school?”

Gary and I looked at one another and decided right then and there that the jig was up.  Gary took the three Black Cat firecrackers out of his pocket and laid them on the teacher’s desk.  I unloaded the dozen or so still in my pockets, along with the nickel I’d scored off of the three that I had sold Gary behind the classroom just twenty minutes before.  We never saw Miss Nosey Tattletale catching the deal go down apparently.

Well, disappointment was written all over Miss Davang’s face as she marched Gary and me straightaway to the principal’s office.   I had to confess how I’d lifted the small black polytechnic devices from my brother’s stash, in hopes of making my fortune at school.  I had several other deals lined up but they never had a chance of coming to fruition unfortunately.

The final bell rang and Mr. Roberts made it plain that phone calls to our parents were forthcoming.  Our loot was confiscated and we were ordered to go home henceforth.  It was the longest walk of my life.

I faintly remember my mother chasing me back down the street once she caught sight of me dragging my sorry butt up the driveway – I guess Mr. Roberts had made good on his promise of that phone call.

There was then the LONGEST wait of my life as I pondered what my father and brother were going to say and do to me, respectively, once they got home.

Well, my father expressed his disappointment by grounding me.  He then went on to criticize both my brother and me for possessing illegal firecrackers in the first place.  I tried the defense of stating that they were not mine.  As I had stolen them from my brother, that play did not work so well. So then Bobby tried to defend his right to own them as he had acquired them in another state.  But neither argument swayed my father.  Didn’t we know that they were against the law, blah, blah, blah. When he confiscated Bobby's remaining brick of firecrackers, just to prove his point, I then had to contend with my brother’s wrath.  There were times like these that I really wish that I had a room of my own.

To sum it all up, mom was mad; dad was disappointed; Bobby was pissed.  And, I was the least popular kid at the dinner table that evening.

I would have gotten past the whole sad childhood affair much sooner than I did, had we all not been reminded with the midnight explosions coming from our own front yard each New Year’s Eve.  They must have gone on for the next ten years or so as dad had a pretty good supply of firecrackers at his disposal.