If you’ve read this space before, you know I like telling stories about how things used to be and, in some cases, how ridiculous things used to be, and this is one of those stories.
It all happened in junior high and was caused by absolutely Draconian rules that made no sense to me then, and make even less sense to the current version of the teenager who could only shake his head and wonder what the adults who thought up this nonsense were thinking. A policy and a practice, both of which were, frankly, lunacy.
The policy involved limits on when students were allowed to visit their lockers. Unlike in high school, when locker access was permitted at any time between periods, in junior high, this was verboten! Instead, there were specific times at which locker access was allowed. And, what all the labyrinthine rules came down to was this. You could go at the beginning of the day, before lunch (which was, of course, the middle of the day), and at the end of the day. And that was it.
Now, while that little schedule might make some sense to someone who was looking at it on paper, anyone who took exactly one minute to see its effects in the halls could have immediately told you it was the height of lunacy. Because, by limiting locker visits in this manner, what the administration forced students to do was to take everything they needed for their morning classes and, in these pre-backpack days, haul it around with them for three hours. That first period book that you didn’t need after 8:45? Oh, you’d be carrying it right up until lunch time, when you could go to the locker and dump it.
Of course, when you dumped all the books you needed for your morning classes, well. You’d better make sure you grabbed everything you needed for the afternoon. Because, remember, you couldn’t go back to your locker until the day was over. So, you’d have that eighth-period book with you for hours before you needed it, just like you had the first period book for hours after you needed it. Brilliant, no? If, of course, the aim here was to have 90 pound thirteen-year-old girls carrying seventy pounds of books. For, of course, no earthly reason whatever.
Oh, I asked. I asked some teachers and even some administration officials (politely, in both cases), exactly what the point of the locker policy was. I asked again after I found out that no such policy existed at the high school, querying said adults about why the high schoolers could visit their lockers between every class if they so desired, but we had to play pack mule all day and spend the first three minutes of every class period trying to stuff all the books we didn’t need for the class under our seats. I asked. But never got an explanation.
There were some mumbles about students being late for classes if they went to their lockers after every period. Another suggestion was that it would cause “confusion”. But, since there were no problems with students being late for first and fourth periods, when locker visits were allowed, and society didn’t break down into a combination of “The Purge” and “Escape From New York” during either of those times, neither explanation held much water. Fact was, there was no good reason we couldn’t be permitted to go to our lockers after every class. We just weren’t. And, that was the way it was. Because the administration said so. And, yes, I’m still bitter. But, I digress.
There was no good reason, but the policy was in place and it was enforced, so you lugged a bunch of stuff you didn’t need around all day. Along with the stuff you did need. Like your pencil. Yeah. We’re getting there.
The next link in the little chain of events wasn’t so much a policy, but a practice. The school district issued you a pencil every nine weeks. New marking period? New pencil. Making a pencil last nine weeks was quite the trick, and most of my classmates of the female persuasion didn’t try. They brought in their own. Some of my friends? Oh, we were going to use exactly one pencil for the entire marking period. So. You could imagine what our pencils looked like as the nine weeks approached their end. An inch long with the eraser long gone. One among us actually got a blister on the inside of his thumb as a result of the hard metal that formerly held his eraser rubbing there, as his pencil was now so tiny it didn’t even clear his hand.
And if we needed to erase something? (And, trust me, we did.) Well, in the last, say, three weeks of the marking period, we tried to use what was left of the eraser…which was nothing. The result was usually a graphite smudge over which we’d write the correct answer. (Or, what we imagined the correct answer to be.) Other times, the result was a hole that the metal where the eraser used to be tore in the paper. One would think a teacher might take us to task for, basically, ripping holes in test papers every time we had to erase, but none ever did. And, I suspect the reason for that is that “practice” I mentioned above.
There was absolutely no rule against a teacher lending a student a pencil should he or she lose or forget his or hers. (Or giving him or her a new one when his or hers was basically a tiny blunt piece of graphite with a metal cap on it.) There was no rule. But, a prohibition against lending pencils might as well have been enshrined in the Constitution.
Ask one of our junior high teachers for a pencil, and your request would be met first with shock and then with derision. “You came to my class unprepared???” Um. No. See. I had a pencil somewhere in this seventy-pound pile of books and notebooks, but, it’s not here now, so… “YOU are responsible for making sure to bring all the proper materials to my class!” Well, look here under my desk. Here are the materials for your class and all the other classes I have this afternoon, and, oh, yes, here are my gym clothes, because I’ve got to carry those around, too… “So, I’m not giving you a pencil. See if you can borrow one from someone else!”
This, of course, led to the next bit, which was the poor blighter with no pencil having to look sheepishly around the room to see if one of his classmates would lend him a pencil. In most cases, someone, usually of the female persuasion, would hold up a pencil and it would be passed up to the unfortunate. Then, would come the final salvo from the teacher. “If you’re now finished interrupting my class…” Well, you know, teach, we could have avoided this entire dog and pony show if you’d have just pulled one of the two dozen brand new pencils you have in your desk out and given it to me. But, yeah. All done “interrupting”. So, you go on and teach and I’ll sit here thinking of ways to fill your car with sludge from the sewer plant.
Exchanges like these, unnecessary as they were, did have the intended effect on most of us. We were careful to make sure we didn’t forget our pencils, lest we be berated by our scandalized teacher. But. The combination of the locker policy and the unwritten rule about lending pencile were about to combine to create an incident that would cause absolute bedlam. And. I. Couldn’t. Have. Loved. It. More.
If you were in junior high with me, you remember the cubbies outside the lunch room. If you weren’t, this was a wall of shelves where you could, before lunch, put that big pile of books you had to carry around, so that there’d be, you know, room on the lunch table for, um, lunch. So, on the way into the cafeteria, most everyone would place their books and other materials in the cubbies, then go and eat.
The next piece of this is supposition on my part. I have no idea if the perpetrator or perpetrators of the incident had been pencil shamed, but, my guess is, they had been. Or were about to be. Because, someone, while one of the three daily lunch periods was underway, went into those cubbies and took every single pencil and all other writing implements contained therein. And, as there had to be 150 kids at lunch at that time, they got quite the haul of pencils.
Now, you can imagine what happened when lunch ended and everyone came out to grab their books out of the cubbies. Students quickly noted the missing pencils and it didn’t take long for everyone to realize what had occurred while they were blissfully eating their “gravy train” (our term for ground beef and gravy over whipped potatoes). Of course, there wasn’t a lot of time to stand and commiserate, as the clock was ticking toward the start of the next class period.
Please now imagine exactly what happened when that class period started. Virtually everyone in the class was now without a pencil. (Virtually. Because, I had one. Most days, after my final morning class, rather than put my pencil among my books, I shoved it in my pocket to make things easier during the midday swap of the morning books for the afternoon books. And, on the day in question, I hadn’t thought to remove the pencil from my pocket and place it, with my books, in one of the cubbies during lunch. So. While we were all eating “gravy train” and someone was light-fingering all the pencils, mine remained in my pocket. Thus, when fifth period began, due to nothing more than my absent-mindedness, I was the only one in the class with a pencil.)
I don’t remember which of my classmates first broached the subject of needing to “borrow” a pencil with the fifth-period teacher. I do remember that the scandalized teacher began bloviating, but she was quickly preempted by several other classmates asking to do the same. The teacher’s head nearly exploded before the class could get out the explanation. “How could you all have lost your pencils???” And, we all deserve credit, since no one shouted, “We didn’t lose them, they got stolen, because your stupid policy doesn’t allow us to keep them in our lockers while we eat!”
The explanation eventually came, however, and, when it did, the teacher understood that everyone was in the same boat, penciless. UNPREPARED for her class. She also understood that she faced a stark choice…either teach a class in which exactly one of the twenty-five students could take notes or break into her store of valuable No. 2s. She grimaced and relented, grumbling about how, as “young adults”, we needed to learn to take better care of our things, and passed out pencils to the entire class. Even me. And, yeah, I took my gift yellow Ticonderoga and stuffed it in my other pocket. And, at the end of the day, I put it in my locker for safekeeping.
The other pencil? Well. That one remained in my pocket the rest of the day and every day thereafter until it was replaced at the end of the nine weeks. The replacement? Right back in the pocket. All through junior high and high school. There was always a pencil in my left front pocket.
What happened to the hundred-plus pencils and other assorted writing implements that were stolen in the “Great Pencil Theft of 19something”? I have no idea. I asked around, but, everybody was Sergeant Schultz. No one knew anything. No one saw anything. But, somewhere in the school was a locker absolutely filled with pencils…that would still be useless to the owner if he lost one during the time when locker visits were forbidden.
Things Amic Thinks About 