St E CYO Reunion Gazette

Saturday Nov 12, 2011

CYO CSI Edition
Editors Note: One never
knows what the days electronic tide will bring. We just received this mysterious email. It recounts the glory stories of the authors St. E schoolday (mis)-adventures. Although anonymous, the email note contains intriguing clues of time and place. Using high tech tools, the author used an Internet Anonymizer program to hide his/her true email address. Enjoy the tales of this ex-grade-school scofflaw, this classroom incorrigible of yore, this erstwhile hallway hooligan, this boiler-room-bad-boy made good. It was the best of times. A great summer spent at Paddlers or the bowling alley playing pinball for free. We had figured out how to fool the machine into thinking we were paying. It was also the worst of times, the summer ended and we were 2 weeks into our sixth grade school year. Puberty had hit and the girls sure looked different, but we had other things on our minds. A rumor was circulating that the janitor would let you drive his car around the school grounds after school. WOW! So a couple of us asked - and off we GO raising a trail of dust on the east side of campus. During our second driving episode I noticed a couple shiny keys on the key ring, so when we were returning the keys I tried them on the school door. The key turned. Um this could be good. Now we have a plan. During our third driving episode I will bicycle to Hudsons Jewelry in Bellemore Plaza and have a key duplicated. There were closer places, way closer, like across the street from the school at the old Ace Hardware (now Farm Fresh), but that could get us caught for sure. I must point out that DO NOT DUPLICATE had not been invented. This key turned out to be the Master Key to the entire school and church. What were we going to do now? It was just after dark, a moonless night, there were no cars parked on the east side of the school, it was my first time entering. The boiler room was dimly light inside with the big cylindrical tank about two feet off the ground and five feet in diameter. I was looking at the neatly hanging tools over the workbench on south wall when I heard a click. I froze. My hearing was now extremely acute. Where was the sound coming from? Was it my nerves? Was it the door I entered resetting itself? Was someone coming into the room? I didnt move. Click click. The hallway door opened and on went the lights. Someone was coming. The big boiler protected me from being seen. Slowly and stealthily, like a cat, I retraced my path along the south wall, working my way around the boiler, back to the door I had entered. I prayed that the visitor was not planning to exit through that same door. Hearing footsteps and seeing legs under the boiler, I quietly rotated around to remain 180 degrees opposite them. Apparently they were just returning a tool to their workbench and exited the same way they came in. A big adrenalin rush I must say. Immediately I exited the building and ran home. So was I afraid? No, that would come later. What did I learn from this encounter? Circle the buildingCircle the buildingyou idiot. Maybe also post a lookout. Fall had arrived along with Halloween. Halloween usually included some toilet paper work, decorative artwork on windows using paraffin and perhaps deflated car tires, always 2 of them per car. After terrorizing the neighborhood my associates and I decided to pay a visit to the school, paraffin in hand. We soaped all the west and east side windows and for extra credit. I soaped the inside of the first grade class leaving one of the windows open to provide an explanation on how the inside of the windows could have been soaped (by a very small person perhaps 2 feet tall and weighing 10 pounds). We never mentioned anything to anyone and never heard another word about the soaping. I have wondered if anyone even noticed. This could have been a self-defeating soaping had they figured the game out and changed the locks. What follows would then have never happened. It all started with Abraham Lincoln. That year we had to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I memorized a few lines so if the teacher strolled through the aisles during the test she would see something on my paper resembling the actual

email website

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text. At lunch I let myself in the classroom and swapped out that paper with one I had previously written, earning a perfect score. This was a very risky tactic and was never repeated. Later on that year the teacher, for reasons I cant remember or of course understand, asked me if I wanted to repeat 6th grade. Apparently I was not living up to her ridiculously high standards. So I thought I should pay more attention to my grades, literally. About once a month I would enter the classroom during the evening and change her grade book. She never locked her desk. Unfortunately, the best I could do was to change the grades from a B, C, or D minus to a B, C, or D+. It hurt that I couldnt change all the minuses to plusses, but that might have been too obvious. Im sure she was oblivious to these changes, as they would appear to have been beyond the scope of her imagination. We are now entering 7th grade and the teacher is always locking his desk so there wasnt any opportunity for the much needed grade adjustments. I continued to look for options. One time my associate and I were exiting the school after a late night exploration. We were about twenty feet from the door when an explosion occurred. Had the M-80 we planted gone off prematurely? No, no Bomb had exploded. Had the police fired a warning shot over our heads? No, there were no Police around. It scared the you know what out of us. It was a sonic boom. We have shared many good laughs over the years remembering this episode. Our 8th grade year began with a depressing message on the cork board above our really black blackboard. Eight Down, Eight To Go it said. Each letter had been laboriously cut out and had no less the four pins attaching it to the cork board. Our cute uniformed and now really good looking (hot) female students (puberty and hormones now accelerating) had cut out the letters and pinned them to the board. During the first week of school I noticed our teacher had answer books to our homework and test problems. Those could be a worthwhile extraction from his desk. Over the next three weeks I would pay numerous visits to the classroom but the teacher always, without exception, locked his desk. One problem with entering the school from the boiler room was being highly exposed nightly to street or sidewalk traffic while running to the eighth grade room. Undoubtedly we were leaving dusty shoe prints on the overly polished vinyl

floors and I am sure our finger prints abounded. It is amazing we never got nailed. Its now parent teacher conference week, my parents have just returned from their meeting, I dont remember the specifics of what they said about it but it motivated me to try again to secure the answer books. After some serious lock breaking study, I finally hit success. I slowly slid the top drawer open an inch or so and then gently pulling the rightside down, it popped open. After doing a little rooting around I was quickly exiting the building with four answer books. What a feat! But its not over yeta test of nerves is coming soon. The next morning just before lunch hour our teacher uncharacteristically leaves the classroom for about five minutes. He returns somewhat agitated. At this time, I am the only one who knows about his missing answer books and on his next command I know exactly whats up. EVERYONE EMPTY YOUR DESK OUT ONTO THE FLOOR AND STAND OFF TO THE SIDE .

NOW

The answer books are long gone, stored in my secret cubby hole. What happens next shows the benefit of continuing corporal punishment in a stress-inducing environment. Anyone who has had their sideburns grabbed, lifting them up so you are on your tippy toes and then been slapped so hard in the face that the imprint of each finger is outlined on the side of your face, (and you dare not cry) can easily keep a straight face and not be intimidated by this desk search and seizure. My poker face saved the day and kept my access to the answer books. During this shakedown it became apparent to the class that our teacher was missing some books but what books?one of the girls suggested that he left them at home(God bless her).NO I JUST CALLED HOME, he said. After the teacher meticulously searches through everyones stuff laying on the floor, he gives up. It is never mentioned again.

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Some months later he missed a golden opportunity to connect some dots, possibly leading to what happened to his answer books. The setting is early in the morning. Before the teacher would arrive, someone might ask if anyone got the answer to a particularly difficult homework problem. At rare times we worked hard and couldnt find an answer. Most times we were just lazy. One morning I shared a history answer with someone, who shared it with someone, who shared it with someone else. During the history homework review/grading process, one of the really smart girls (call her girl J) who didnt have an answer to this problem asked what was the answer? Luckily, another girl (call her girl P) shouts out the answer, which agreed with the teachers replacement answer book. The teacher confirms that this is the correct answer, but girl J does not stop there. She wants to know how do you get that answer. Now the teacher starts rummaging through his history book and cant find any reference which would lead to that answer. So he asks girl P, how/where did you get your answer? It is soon obvious that ten or so other kids have the correct answer but are at a loss to explain where they found the answer in the History book. The teacher is suspicious and actually takes one of the boys (call him boy L) out into the hall and threatens him with grave harm if the does not disclose who gave him the answer. The rescue occurs when another girl offers that her mother helped her with the problem. One of my partners in crime specifically remembers giving that girl the correct answer earlier that morning. I should have probably married that girl. She probably went far in this world. This was a close call because that answer only existed in the answer book and nowhere else. At this point, if the teacher had fully realized what was happening, things might have turned out quite differently. I always had all the answers available but never did I attempt to score beyond my God given abilities. A B always made me happy, especially where no work was involved. Eighth grade graduation is now approaching and as part of my self-imposed penance and guilty conscious I decide to return the answer books the same way they were borrowed. After a couple attempts, I figured that was enough. That darn desk was always locked. Thinking about it now, trying to return the books was a really bad idea.

I could have tried going to confession but I wonder where that would have led. While we were in high school a bunch of us were walking by the rectory one evening on our way to Maryland Market when the Pastor yelled out to us and invited us in for a Coke. We sat in the basement with him sharing remembrances of our grade school days. We were all about to be high school juniors at the time. He mentioned that someone had been entering the school late at night and wondered if we might be able to help him find out who the culprits were. I always had the strong feeling he knew he was looking at them and was letting bygones be bygones. So how did my participating classmates turn out? They have remained lifelong friends who have made significant contributions to society and made G. Gordon Liddy look like a tattle tale. And, as you can tell, I am a very gifted, successful fiction writer. See you at the CYO Reunion!

Check out more St. E memories and stories on the reunion website: http://stecyoreunion.blogspot.com

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