Wooden school desks

Ah! The first day of grade school, time to pick out your new desk! Or at least, in MY day we got to pick out our desk. And I mean the cool desks, not the kind with the basket underneath to set your books, the ones that the lid lifted up on and you could put your books inside along with your pencils, notebooks, erasers, pencil box, rubber bands, spitball straw, the illegal pack of gum...all the stuff a kid needs to survive from school day to school day. Hinged wooden desks that when you lifted them up and didn't remember to hold them up would crash onto your head or slam down on your hand causing vast amounts of pain and agony and (if you were lucky- fingers crossed) a visit to the nurses office. My desk. A veritable treasure trove of unimaginable delights. One never could be certain of what would be in there after about 3 weeks. and sometimes, you weren't really sure you wanted to know. Yet you were always surprised when you found that one assignment that was due 4 days ago. You know, the one you got an incomplete on? After several weeks of school we were ordered to clean our desks out. Each row got a garbage can and the paper shuffling and book dropping would commence, along with declarations of "THERE that is!!" No one was ever allowed to rifle through anyone else's desk or even touch it, otherwise certain death would have ensued. Or at the very least a sound scolding from the teacher and merciless teasing from classmates. I mean, it isn't any of your business if someone has cough drops or anti-gas tablets in your desk in case of sore throat or gastrointestinal distress. NO SIREE! You just keep your hands off, Bub! The old wooden hinged desks also had that little metal hook that you would pull down and it would fit snugly into the pencil tray and hold your desk perfectly horizontal and not at a slant. That way you could make your paper mache' globe without it rolling down into your lap. Not that that ever happened... I remember one particular boy in my third grade class was not particularly "clean" about his desk nor did he follow the "proper care of your desk" rules. His desk was constantly overflowing with pencils, loose leaf papers and worksheets spilling onto the floor creating a veritable paper hazard (which most of us kids knew was purely intentional); waiting for the inattentive passerby to slip, arms flailing, feet above their heads, crashing to the floor, papers floating to the crime scene like giant square snowflakes. Many a time he caught the unsuspecting student in his carefully planned trap. Pointing to the bleeding and dazed victim on the floor, he would laugh his evil maniacal laugh like a man in Bedlam. Some of the other kids would snicker, until they saw the injured party hurt and crying, then they would give the perpetrator a scathing and disgusted look. It was all fun and games for him until the day the Teacher fell neatly into his tiger trap. And when I say "fell" I mean hurtled to the ground like an Atom bomb on the sand plains. I must say, looking back on it, it was pure grace in slow motion. Teacher hit the stray piece of paper and skated about 3 feet in a Hamill Camel on one orthopedic heel, arms out to her sides for balance, her sheaf of papers trailing behind her in the breeze. Her heel caught in one of the broken tiles of the floor and she started to descend to the cold marble in graceful repose, taking out 4 other desks as she tried to find a hold to break her fall. Students began spilling out of their desks like a broken bag of potato chips, desperately clawing the air trying to keep their seats but unsuccessful in their meek attempts and finally giving up to the inevitable forces of gravity. Teacher came to rest face down after bouncing twice on her chest (thanks to her cross-your-heart bra), face down in the middle of the aisle, smacking her forehead, bloodying her nose and breaking her coke bottle lenses on the unforgiving tile. No one said or did anything for a the length of a breath and then the Kid starting laughing while the rest of us looked on in shock. In fact, he laughed so hard, he fell out of his desk and into the aisle behind her, completely helpless with laughter. Teacher scrambled to her feet, with the Kid still laughing like a crazed baboon on steroids, she scrambled to her feet. Whipping a hankie from her blouse, staunching the flow of blood from her nose and without missing a beat through near blindness, she grabbed the Kid by his ear and dragged him out of his seat and down the hall to the Principal's office. The rest of the class sat in stunned disbelief unsure of what to do in the aftermath. We slowly looked around the room- which resembled the fallout of a nuclear explosion- and stared at each other with pie-plate eyes. What exactly was going to happen to the Kid? What would happen? The Rack? The Chinese Water Torture? Bamboo under the fingernails? Suddenly, the silence was broken by howling and screaming coming from the direction of the Principal's office, as if some demon from the depths of Hell was loosed in our small little country school. I believe it was at that point he thought his prank ceased to be funny.