Treasured Memories

Back in early grade school, we had a savings account “club” that the school offered in cooperation with a local bank. This club, if that is really what it was, came with a little yellow savings book that slid into a clear plastic sleeve. Every week we would bring it to school, along with a few coins inside, where the teacher would collect them and some lucky teacher's pet would bring them to the principal’s office. Then, at some point, the bank would presumably collect all the loot, stamp our books, and our money would grow, grow, grow!

I remember one particular morning when these bank books were being collected, and I, thinking I had forgotten mine, didn’t pass it in. Unfortunately, a few minutes later I discovered it when reaching in my pocket, and more unfortunately, I said something about it to my teacher.

My teacher at the time was Mrs. Hickson. Mrs. Hickson was, shall we say, a “Large” woman, and by “Large”, I’m not talking “large to a second grader” large. I’m talking “large to a normal human being” large. Before going into second grade, my brother Steve had told me that if you did something wrong in Mrs. Hickson’s class, she would sit on you. I don’t know if he would deny ever having said that today, but he denied it back then- at least he did when I quoted him at the dinner table (“What??!!! I NEVER said that!”, Steve exclaimed. His voice was a mixture of indignation and outrage over this slanderous accusation.) Mom and Dad looked at him with disgust. It sounded like something he would say. But then again, I had been pegged as a liar, so who knew?

That being said, it was with some amount of caution that I raised my hand and told Mrs. Hickson that I had forgotten to give her my savings book. She didn’t sit on me, as I had feared. Instead, she chose to take this opportunity to make an example out of me in front of the entire class. She called me up to the front of the room, where she berated me and droned on and on, acting as if this was some kind of major disruption- second only to the invasion of Poland.

As she wrapped up her scornful diatribe, I was instructed to march myself down to the principal’s office, where I could explain my buffoonish and inconsiderate behavior to Mrs. Perry.

Mrs. Perry was the stern principal of the school. She had one of those overly wrinkled faces that comes from too many years of heavy chain smoking. To me, the wrinkles made her resemble one of those dolls that people in Appalachia make using an old crab apple for a head. This, combined with an abundance of rouge and a deep red lipstick applied by someone who never mastered coloring between the lines, made her both a curious and frightening figure. Some people said she was nice, but I never saw it. She must have been nice to someone though, because after they tore the school down, they named the resulting park after her.

Anyway, I found myself standing in Mrs. Perry’s office, explaining the situation to her as she silently glared at me from behind her big oak desk, her bony index fingers pressed against each other, making the shape of an arrowhead. As she listened, she squinted at me and pursed her deep red lips tightly together, as if she were trying to suck up a marble through some invisible straw. When I was done explaining, there was nothing but silence for what seemed like an eternity- though in reality it was probably more like fifteen seconds. Finally she said, “Let me get this straight. You want me to get up, go over to that bag, unlock the bag, and put your bank book in it- all because you couldn’t hand it in on time?” She glared at me some more.

I glanced at the money bag sitting on the chair behind me. The money bag had a tiny little lock on the top, as if it were a joke, and the bag itself looked like one of those money bags from an old cops and robbers movie- only without the dollar sign on the outside. The chair though, looked exactly like what I had imagined the electric chair to look like.

She continued to glare at me in silence, as if to make the point that she was even more disgusted than Mrs. Hickson was at the special treatment that I apparently thought I deserved.

What was I supposed to say? She seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the situation. She continued with her scowl for several more minutes, just to make sure I fully appreciated the gravity of situation. Finally, she slowly reached across her desk ,then snatched the bankbook out of my sweaty little hand. She graciously agreed to make an exception “just this one time".

I stood there as she silently stared- first at me, then at my bankbook, then finally down into my bankbook. Then she glared back at me as she slowly tipped the envelope upside down and shook it. Nothing dropped out. “There’s no money in here”, she said.

Well, what do you know. Apparently, this had all been a big misunderstanding.

I can still feel the burning of Mrs. Perry’s cold, beady eyes at the back of my head as I slinked out of her door for my long, silent walk of shame through the cold, deserted halls of the penitentiary. As I left, she was no doubt reaching for my permanent record, where she would add yet another black mark.

Why I never made a run for it, I don’t know. Instead, I headed back to class.

There is only one thing worse than being called out in front of your entire class. That is having to come back into the class, midway through a lesson, and having the teacher and the rest of the class watch in silence as you slink back to your seat.

I remember sitting there wishing I were invisible and thinking, “Please, at least let me make it until lunch time.” And I remember the relief I felt when lunch time finally came- only to discover I that had forgotten my lunch money.