Dumpster Safety

I wonder if teachers still make kids write on blackboards when they misbehave, the way Bart Simpson does. Try as I might, I can't picture a student scrawling the phrase “I will not bring guns to class” 200 times. When I was in elementary school, my discipline came in the form of loose-leaf paper and a pen. Sometimes I'd have to write the same phrase 1,000 times, and I think my various teachers were trying to keep me occupied as much as they were trying to punish me. I was always easily distracted, and always a distraction to my classmates with my conversations and antics. Most days, that describes my office situation, and explains why I get more work done after everyone else has gone home. Apparently writing “I will not talk in class” over and over until my pen was dry and my hand was cramped served to teach me very little. And though I should have reached some level of focus, the task would often take longer because my mind would wander and I'd start to pretend my pen was a spaceship. I'd craft an elaborate story in my mind about the crew, and the journeys they'd take and the difficulties they'd encounter, especially when their ink-fuel dried up. In hindsight I realize that I've always been somewhat...off.

By middle school, I'd learned to keep my mouth shut and blend in to the masses. Five elementary schools' worth of graduates converged in 6th grade, and it was easy to stay below the radar and out of trouble. The only time I recall seeing the principal's office was when my mom insisted on lodging a complaint about another student spraining one of my fingers during a game of dodgeball. I was mortified. If I had blocked the ball with my palm or, something even more radical, DODGED it, then I would have been fine. Instead I was too slow and it hit the tip of my finger, threatening to take me out of a concert featuring the best musicians in the county. My right pinky turned purple and swelled to the size of my thumb, and I had to wear a splint holding it to the neighboring finger. The principal and vice-principal humored my mom despite my obvious stupidity, but nothing really came of their understanding nods. I never had to see that office again, and amid a larger population I could still get away with the occasional bout of foolish mischief, like dropping pins into electrical sockets during home economics class to see sparks. I'll never claim I was particularly BRIGHT as a child, as far as common sense goes.

One day during recess we were playing a game of hide-and-seek. Everyone scrambled for trees and nooks in the school building. One kid managed to climb up onto the roof of a one-story segment of the school, using a neighboring fence. I didn't quite have such skills or courage, so I decided to hide behind a dumpster. It was very close to the building and I couldn't squeeze through, but it did have wheels. As I struggled to move the thing, I heard someone clear his throat. Slowly, I looked around to see my math teacher standing there. After pointing out the “DO NOT PLAY ON OR AROUND” sign, he further assigned me a 1,000 word paper on “dumpster safety”. And so, in seventh grade, for the first time in elementary school, I found myself writing as punishment once more.

With all the writing I was forced to do, my handwriting never improved. My mom always joked that I should have become a doctor, and early on some teachers had me try my left hand in case that was the problem. I was even worse as a southpaw. My dad and his sisters have notoriously bad handwriting, so I guess it's just hereditary. Computers have all but eliminated my need to write at all, and I type just about everything except for checks and the occasional note. Kids today are exposed to computers far sooner than I ever was, and I wonder if handwriting is a dying art. I also wonder if the cycle continues. Maybe somewhere, there's a student typing “I will not play on or around dumpsters” 800 times, while a dedicated teacher looks on to make sure he doesn't cheat and copy/paste it all.