I didn’t get in a lot of trouble in school, and never for anything disrespectful, hurtful or damaging. I was never “sent to the office” because of behavior in a classroom. But I did get at least three days of detention that I recall. I’m not sure detention straightened me out because I don’t think my mischievousness caused any long-term harm.
Nickels in the stairwell. Our Junior High Building had four floors, including the basement level. Stairwells were wide, concrete, and had a smooth wooden rail on both the outside and inside. The rail that was on the inside left a small gap as it wrapped around. My friends and I would take turns dropping coins from the third floor. You had to be spot on or they would hit a rail and bounce onto the stairs. Of course, we would always end up by going to the basement to retrieve our coins. On one such trip, I was either making the run on my own or was the first one to the basement because I was the only one who almost literally ‘ran into’ Mr. Dupin, our dean — who was holding my coins. It was almost with a smile that he assigned me one day of after-school detention.
Plus two more days… Unrelated to my first detention, one of our policies during lunch was that you could leave the lunchroom to go do schoolwork, but had to spend the rest of the lunch period in a particular classroom. That was not a punishment. On one such day, and I don’t recall why…. I felt compelled to step out of the classroom into the hallway. Clear at the other end of that hallway was Dean Dupin. I quickly returned to my seat. Momentarily, he stepped in and called me out into the hallway. I didn’t have a satisfactory explanation for my action, so he assigned me a day’s detention. But, I was also chewing gum — so a second day.
There was only one other time that I recall getting in trouble, it was as a freshman and involved Mr. Copenhaver, the band director, and was much worse….. Read about it…