Detention

This morning we got a notification from school that KoKo has a detention for three tardies.

I had to give her some grief, but she was harder on herself than I was.

Aaah, the dreaded detention letter.

I must admit to waiting to get the mail on more than a few occasions so I could grab that notification letter and dispose of it (usually jamming it down the gopher holes where I trapped across the highway).

My earliest memories of detention were in the grade school. I'm pretty sure I set the record for the longest stretch without being able to go out for recess. It seems like either Simon, Chad, Lance, Dale, or I (or some combination) were always in detention.

My main problem was snow balls. Mrs. Hanson gave me - and several of us who were engaged in an all out snow ball blitzkreig - about a week's worth of detentions. I recall having to write the sentence "I will not throw snowballs again" about a million times before our penance was up.

If I had to write that phrase, say, a hundred times, I'd just writ "I" a hundred times down my tablet. Then I'd follow that with "will" and so on until I had the sentence done.

This didn't work out so well for Lance. He'd end up mixing up the order so you'd get a hundred sentences that sounded like something Yoda would come up with "Snowball again will I not throw" or something to that effect.

But this particular time, I managed to finish all my sentences with about 10 minutes to go before the week's final recess was done.

I ran out as quick as I could.

Sure enough, the snow was perfect for throwing snowballs. The flakes were fat, thick, and wet. And they were coming down. This snow is horrible for sledding. So there was just a plethora of victims standing around.

I swear that the snowball pretty much just formed naturally of its own accord right in my hand. I drew a bead on Robbie - for a fat joke he'd cracked earlier in the week - and no sooner had I smacked him upside the head than Mrs. Hanson and her damned eagle eye caught me and before I even had time to take my boots off, she had me right back in detention again . . . where Simon and Lance were finishing off their sentences and I had to start all over again.

The earliest detention I can remember was from second grade. I was in there over lunch with an older pal of mine, Danny, and a classmate Dale (I had actually forgotten all about this memory until Dale told it at his sister's graduation party).

There was a sixth grader girl by the name of Penny who was a bit of a boss. I don't remember the particulars, but she and I were arguing over something when she asked me, "Okay, if you're so smart, what's one minus zero?"

And in a stroke of sheer ingenious wit, I calmly replied, "One Penny too many!"

It was at that point that Dale said she chased me around the detention room for her revenge before Mr. Jackson came in to rescue me.

Things didn't change that much in high school I'm afraid.

Seventh grade was particularly rough. For that's where I met my steady partner in crime, Lon.

I don't remember what we did exactly to get detention, but I simply remember us having to spend 45 minutes in that God-awful room with the squekey hard wood floors adjacent to the office.

We didn't want to wind up there again, so we were planning to be quite polite as the assistant principal (or superintendent - I can't recall) came in to tell us our time was up.

On the way to freedom, we both received a stern 'warning' from him about not making this a regularity. Well, we both thanked him and assured him ". . . this will not happen again, Mr. Keebler."

Lon and I thought we honestly were being polite and that we were done.

But the administrator flew into a rage.

Lon and I didn't know what we had said (I only recall his face turning the color of a fire engine and him showering us with spittle) but he read us the riot act and we found ourselves with about two weeks of detention.

We obviously avoided Mr. Keebler for the rest of the year.

That was until the final day of school when - surprise, surprise - Lon and I were serving a detention (this one for skipping Mrs. Griesbach's Geography class and climbing the old grain elevator over by Lance's). The detention room next to the office had another door that opened unto the hallway. This was never opened, but someone had done so when we entered (probably because it was so stuffy and the office needed some air movement).

As we sat at a table waiting for the time to be up when Mr. Keebler sauntered down the hallway.

"That guy's an ass!" Lon said.

"No kidding," I said.

"Well, don't worry," Brian Cameran (or 'Puffer' as we knew him) said from the other table, "Mr. Anderson isn't coming back next year."

"Who?" Lon and I both asked.

"Anderson, the superintendent," Puffer said.

"Who's that?"

"The guy who just walked by."

"I thought that was Mr. Keebler," Lon said.

"Yeah, who's Mr. Anderson?" I asked.

At this Puffer laughed until his shaggy blonde mop waved all around and he was cackling like a hyena (if you knew Puffer, you knew that laugh of his).

"What's so funny?"

"Mr. Anderson is Mr. Keebler!"

"What the hell?" I said.

"Then why did we get a month's worth of detention for calling him that?" Lon said, and that same damn question was on my mind.

"You idiots," Puffer said, "His real name is Mr. Anderson but he looks like the Keebler Elf."

Enough said there.

Eighth grade rolled around and things got better. Or I just stopped being a smart ass.

But I did have several detentions stockpiled up (so maybe I was still a bit of a smart ass).

I just thought I'd serve them all at once one evening.

There I found myself in that same room with the creaking floor. I sat at the lone long office table and took out a month's supply of Hit Parader, Circus, and Metal Edge magazines.

After awhile, Mr. Swantek (the principal who scared the crap out of me) came in to supervise me once the secretaries and everyone else left. I had just planned to serve the 2.5 hours of detention all in one shot.

As the clock neared four, Mr. Swantek asked, "So how much longer do you have?"

"Until 5:30," I said, flipping a page in one of my magazines.

"What?" he asked, shocked.

"I know . . ." I said.

"Well, we'll have you serve a little bit longer . . ."

And in his one act of kindness, he let me leave a little after four and he called it even!