Oftentimes, some naughty youngster would get caught trying to pinch something from his or someone else's lunch sack when we were allowed to go in and get our coats for recess time. Every day we'd sit at the long tables in the lunch room and bring out various least favorite items from our bags which would be offered up in trade to someone who had something we liked better. It was a great opportunity for us to try some foods new and different from the usual fare we got at home.
Second grade wasn't the glorious experience that my first year had been, all because of the wicked Miss Greenhill, who had the audacity to slap my hand with a wooden ruler just because I talked to a seat mate. Teachers should try that today and see how fast the parents would haul them into court. Of course, it had the desired effect; I ceased talking during class time. However, to this day I still bear a grudge against my second grade teacher - may she rest in peace. It was a good year in one way; we were learning to write sentences. This meant that I could write notes to my friends telling them how unfair the teacher was instead of risking getting caught talking. The second-grade mind doesn't realize that note-passing is even riskier when an experienced teacher is at the helm. So, yes, I did get my notes read out a couple of times and wound up having to write lines but had no more ruler slaps.
The most memorable experience of my elementary school days came while I was in second grade. As I said before, I was one of those who rode the bus to school. So, each day I got off at my house and walked up the dirt drive to my front door. Each day but one, that is. My best friend and I were sitting on the bus heading home that fateful day, when she asked if I'd like to get off at her house and play for a bit instead of going straight home. It struck me as a wonderful idea, so I got off at her place.
We played for hours, and her mother called us in for supper. "Alice," are you spending the night with Pauline?" her mother asked me. What an out for me! By now it was getting dark, and I knew my mother would be wondering where I'd been; so, I immediately said, "Yes, ma'am." My seven-year-old brain had decided that the best thing to do was spend the night there, go to school with Pauline the next day, and then get off at my house at the usual time when the bus brought us home after school. That way, everything would be as it should.
What a wonderful time I was having - more playing, eating a good supper, and listening to the radio. Suddenly there was a knock at their front door, and I knew without seeing or hearing him that it was my father. I went into Pauline's room and crawled under her bed, knowing in my heart that it was just a stop-gap measure.
All too soon my dad's voice sounded outside her room, "Alice, it's time to go home.
Your mother's been worried." I crawled out and slunk into the front room. He was very polite to Pauline's parents, but when we got to the car he didn't speak to me nor utter a word on the whole drive home. Pulling up in front of our house, he told me to go in as he got out and went around to the back yard. My mother was standing in the doorway crying, and I greeted her by asking, "How did you know where I was?"
It was all very simple to figure out. My father drove to the bus driver's house, and the driver remembered that he had let me off the bus at Pauline's. No telephone was involved, and no neighbors alerted - just my father's keen common sense. It soon became apparent to me just how worried he had been, however, when he came into the house with a small peach tree switch. I had the misfortune to be wearing a dress that day, and my poor little legs were soon covered in red marks while I howled as though the very demons of hell were attacking me. As he switched my legs, he kept asking, "Are you going to do that again? Are you going to scare your mother and me again? What did you think you were doing?" It was only years later when I became a parent that I fully realized that he was punishing me like that because he had been so frightened that something awful might have happened to me. Did I consider contacting the authorities because of parental abuse? No, I just thought what a foolish child I'd been and promised never to do something like that again. Nor did I ever. Peach tree switches were quite effective behavior modification devices. Did this punishment make me stop loving my father or warp me for life? Not at all, though it has remained a distinctive memory for me, one that the adult Alice knows was a punishment administered by a scared, loving parent. There were no further physical punishments from my father after this event.
