Miscalculating

From the Ever Embarrassing Memory File:

'Miscalculating'

Noel Laflin

4-9-18

I really thought the ball would clear the building.  I had seen it happen on other days, watching that kickball sail ever so gracefully over a row of lower grade classrooms and landing ever so beautifully on the big kid’s playground.

But when is did not, as my aim was off apparently, flying straight for the large plate glass window of a classroom instead, I knew I was in trouble.

It made a spectacular crash, taking out every piece of glass in the frame.

Panic stricken, I turned to flee the scene only to run into the arms of Robert Roberts, our principal.

“Stay!” he commanded, as he let me go and sprinted toward the room of screaming second graders.

I was fast on his heels, expecting blood and guts and carnage to haunt my young dreams for a very long time.

No one was near the window at the time gratefully, as they had been in an opposite corner of the room attending their reading circle.  I remembered those reading circles – I had thrown up on half my classmates in just such a one three years prior.  I did not know that I was coming down with the flu at the time.

Seeing that no one was injured, Mr. Roberts pulled me aside and asked me to apologize to one and all.

Sheepishly, I did.

And that was the end of the scandal, or so I thought.

As no note was sent home, nor any late afternoon phone call placed to my parents, I kept mum about the unfortunate incident.

But two weeks later my folks came home from the monthly PTA meeting, waking me up and asking to speak with me.

My dad was holding a flattened kickball.  It looked like it had sailed through a plate glass window.

He had but one question.

“Anything you want to tell us, young man?”