The year was 1985 and I was in the
fourth grade. I don't remember much about most of my classmates... time has
blurred my recollection until all that remain are hazy impressions.
Occasionally though, certain instances part the fog and stand out in sharp
relief.
I first realized something was amiss when I noticed a girl named Carol making
trip after trip up to the teacher's desk to get tissues. We were having a quiet
study time and students were allowed to move around the room so long as they
were quiet, but the only one moving was Carol. Idly, I watched her take the
tissues into the coatroom located behind the classroom. A few moments later, she
headed back up for more tissues.
What was she doing? I ignored my book in favor
of this new development -- it promised to be much more interesting. Carol made
several more tissue trips, and by now other students were watching her as well.
Whispering, we each produced our own theories about what she was up to. Most of
the others thought Carol was the one that needed all that tissue, but then one
of my sharp-eyed companions noticed that John was missing.
John was the "bad" student in our class. He was loud. He was obnoxious. He never
did his homework, and he disrupted the teacher whenever he could. I'm sure
everyone knows what I'm talking about -- every classroom has a similar student.
Since John was nowhere to be found, logic dictated that he had something to do
with Carol's behavior. The fact that the two spent most of their time together
reinforced that idea. And now that we knew who was involved, we wanted to find out
what they were up to. If John was involved, it couldn't be good.
The easiest way
we could think of was also the most obvious. One of our number went up to the
teacher and told her that John and Carol were in the coat closet together.
Naturally she went to investigate, and all hell broke loose.
The teacher burst out of the closet with a redfaced John
and shamefaced Carol in tow. She marched them out of the room, shouting over her
shoulder that Mrs. Biggs, the principal's secretary, would be up in a moment to
keep an eye on us.
Our classroom was on the top floor of the school and the
office was on the ground floor. We had a little time to investigate, but we had
to make it fast. Once that harridan Mrs. Biggs showed up, we'd be under constant
observation. Several of us crept toward the coat closet. What would we find?
The coatroom was more than the name implied. The teacher kept supplies there in
several filing cabinets. There wasn't a door, so we ducked around the
cinderblock wall to see what there was to see. At first, we didn't see a thing.
The room wasn't lit, so our eyes had to adjust to the gloom.
We smelled the
problem before we saw it.
Hidden in the corner,
underneath a shelf, was a pair underpants with several turds spilling out of one
leg hole. An open drawer on the nearest filing cabinet held used wads of tissue,
obviously the tissue that Carol had been bringing to John. Judging from the
amount of tissue, it must have been messy. Laughing and gagging from the close
atmosphere of the coatroom, we ran back to tell everyone else what we saw.
John earned himself the nickname "Mr. Poopypants," and Carol didn't get off the
hook either. For the rest of the year, whenever one of us needed a tissue, the
big joke was to ask her to bring us one. John later said that he crapped back
there on purpose to make the teacher mad, but we all knew better and we teased
him mercilessly. Kids can be cruel, and we were no exception.
I think that part
of our teasing came from the thought that something like that could happen to
any of us. The thought of shaming ourselves like that drove us to be mean to
John to cover our own unease. After all, HE had made an accident in his pants
but the rest of us hadn't.
Strangely enough, John started applying himself to his schoolwork soon
afterward. I wonder if our teasing had anything to do with John's choice of
occupation later in life -- he's a lawyer. Could our teasing have been so cruel as
to drive him to THAT?
-- Artful Dodger
