HOME

Arts Sciences

Health American Life

Favorite Pets

It was in this time frame that I became very interested in snakes. I had several pet snakes. That is, I had them until Mom got wind of what I was doing. It took a while, but I eventually caught on to the fact that snakes were not welcome in our house. One time I had a small green snake that I kept in a box in the backyard. I went out to check on it before school one day and as I was handling it, Mom called me for something. I dropped the snake into my shirt pocket and then did Mom's bidding, whatever it was. Snakes are cold-blooded creatures, and when they get next to a warm body, they sometimes tend to settle down. That's what happened to my little green snake, it got comfortable in my shirt pocket. I simply forgot about it and went on to school.

All the teachers at the school were women. The lower grade teachers were young and kind of skinny while the middle and upper grade teachers were older, and seemed to get progressively heavier with increasingly bigger butts as you went from the middle grades through to the upper grades. The principal, now, she was in the top spot and she had the biggest backside of them all. At that time, I had honestly thought that the importance of the teacher and what grades they got to teach, the "pecking order" so to speak, all had to do with the size of their rear ends. Honest. That's what I thought.

My grade teacher at that time had a thing about students' passing notes between one another. Of course, the more she objected to the practice, the more of a challenge it became. Everybody did it. I just could not overlook such a challenge myself and of course, this day I got caught. A couple of us were hauled down to the principals' office and told to empty our pockets on her desk. Naturally they were looking for the notes that we swore we didn't write. Nobody was prepared for my little surprise, not even me. After unloading my pants pockets, I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, a pencil, and one green garden snake. The snake was rather conspicuous because it was the only thing on the principals' desk that kept moving.

First dead pan silence, then one scream, two screams, and then all hell broke loose. The next thing I remember is the fire alarm went off and the whole school was evacuated to the playground. To this day, I don't know how that happened. I got away in the confusion, but only for a little while. The fire trucks came, the firemen looked around, got back into their trucks, and left. When we got the All Clear to return to class, I noticed the janitor in the principals' office. He was crawling around on his hands and knees looking for something and I knew what that something was. I had barely sat down at my desk when one of the teachers came to fetch me. When we got to the principals' office, I was handed a sealed white envelope, and told to go home and give the envelope to my parents. That was the only time in my life that I had ever been kicked out of school.

Dad had to go and talk to the principal before they would let me back into school. I overheard Dad talking to Mom about it, how upset the principal was and how she stuttered when she tried to explain to him what had happened. Mom seemed to be smiling and Dad didn't appear too angry right at that moment. But then, him and I hadn't talked about it yet either. I don't remember what my punishment was, but I did get some form of punishment for the trouble I had caused. Punishment for any wrongdoing was a sure thing in our family. The other thing I remember about the incident was that I was very confused. I mean, here I had done this terrible, terrible, awful thing, and all the time Dad was lecturing me and giving me hell about it, the corners of his mouth kept twitching. Try as he might, he just couldn't keep a straight face.

Thanks for your participation.

HOME

Arts Sciences

Health American Life