HORWOOD

Bits and Pieces

Continued from May 16

When I started grade school, nobody had any worries about me being sort of a barrier or an impediment to those receiving a Rhodes Scholarship; the likes of Bill Rowe, Danny Williams or George W. (doubaya) weren’t in any danger of being out manipulated or humiliated by me.

When I was in Grade 3 or 4, I had this female teacher, Miss Kneecapper (of course I was the mastermind that tagged her with that name). Honestly, when I was standing in class, with books upon my head, up in the corner, my eyeballs were dead level with her kneecaps, she looked like a dried salted capelin sitting behind her desk with that, “See on through you look,” she stood about 10 ft. tall, not exaggerating a bit.

She also had a very uncanny way of referring to me as numbskull; anyway I got up the nerve one time to ask her why. Why Miss Kneecapper do you call me that? Looking back at it now, maybe I should never have asked her that question. It could have been a little bit presumptuous on my part, however I still think that she might have watched too much of “Archie Bunker,” certainly from the answer she gave me, and so quickly.

Lighting never travelled as fast as the way she responded. Anyway, I didn’t take to her kind of responses lightly and I was going to do something about it, and soon. A young boy can’t stand being demoralized in front of his own classmates. Yes, my ducky, I had a definite plan and I was about ready to unleash it unto poor Miss Kneecapper. Watch out! Let her go, take the bull by the horns, that was the type of motto I lived by. Nobody could devise a strategy like me, especially if there was the use of unfair tactics or skullduggery involved. I was not very bright as a student, but full of devious ways to combat a shameful incident, especially when the shamefulness was at my expense.

Anyway, I got myself 12 sticks of Bazooka bubble gum and I chewed on it for a good 20 minutes, that was for my own satisfaction as well, of course, but when that gum was nice and stretchy, elastic almost, it would adhere to almost anything. Put the plan in motion was my objective and naturally Miss Kneecapper was the object of my little prank.

While she was fiddling around at her desk, probably correcting some of my mistakes, I managed to sneak underneath her desk and place the big wad of sticky Bazooka bubble gum between her two knees, and I didn’t have to stoop very low to accomplish that feat. Then I crawled back to my seat, sat down, and raised my hand to get her attention and said to her, in a very sad and conniving tone of voice, Miss Kneecapper there’s a snake crawling under your desk. Well, she jumped to her taps (feet) and as I expected and which of course was logically predictable, the bubble gum stuck to her knees and with one vicious move, she sighted in on me, struck me across the back of the neck and catapulted me over a full row of seats and I suddenly hit against the opposite wall and tumbled back, face-first, against the hot stove pipes of the pot belly stove: from there,  being in a daze and knocked senseless, in a state of comatose like, I was rocketed like someone ejected from a missile launcher into the coal bin and of course came out of that ordeal coal black and very shattered.

I asked Miss Kneecapper, if I could be excused from the classroom to go and wash-up. Bad, real bad, choice of words. Understatement of the century, you might say. But, again, without any hesitation she responded with so much built-up hostility and sarcasm in her voice, this time, faster than the roadrunner trying to get away from the claws of a coyote; she wouldn’t allow it. I retreated, somewhat distraught and returned to my desk and I have never been the same since. True story.

Conclusion in the May 30 edition of The Pilot.