Principal of the Thing (eBook)

Douglas

Douglas Shahonek did not attend school with much regularity. He was certainly not popular with the other kids in my seventh grade English class, but everyone, me included, was glad to see him when he did come to school. We all wanted to see what he’d do next.

The year was 1980, and the kids in the school I worked in were tuned in to the latest fads. Izod shirts, designer purses, Rubik cubes—these kids followed the pack. Not Douglas. Douglas was a throwback to another time, or maybe he was just a whole new model. For starters, he was huge, impossibly tall for a middle schooler, and he wore overalls every day, the kind with pockets everywhere. His hair was cut in a burr. If he cared what anyone thought of him, he hid it well.

Douglas was a mechanical wizard. Long before the technology boom made gadgeteers of all teenagers, there was Douglas. The pockets of his overalls were filled with batteries, wires, screwdrivers, wrenches, knives, tape, string, just an amazing arsenal of stuff!

One of Douglas’s favorite stunts was to loan out pencils and pens. If he heard anyone, anywhere in the room ask to borrow a pen or a pencil, he would immediately pull out an old-fashioned fishing reel, and without a word, cast a pen attached to the line on the reel in the general direction of the request. Toward the end of the period, without notice, and maybe with the user of the pen in mid-sentence, Douglas would wind the pen back in.

Douglas carried many meticulously organized notebooks with him, but, alas, they were not filled with school assignments. Douglas seldom spoke. Instead, he kept his head down, hunched over one of his notebooks. He had one filled with his drawings of cars and pictures he had clipped out of magazines. He had another filled with mazes he designed and drew. Another contained house plans. Whenever I approached his desk to take his notebook away and try to steer him to the class work for the day, he would extend his arm and give the notebook up without argument. He would make a show of going to work on my assignment, but he would soon be back to work on one of his own projects. Douglas’s lack of attention to his class work, coupled with his many absences, led to poor grades in all his classes.

While Douglas said little and almost never acknowledged his fellow students, he did love to stir them up. In the middle of a test, the room might erupt into laughter, and I would look up to see Douglas wearing a halo of blinking lights. A student might be giving a book report, only to lose his audience as a homemade rubber-band-powered helicopter careened around the room.

Shouts of “Mr. Whitwell! Make Douglas stop!” were usually evenly met with giggled stage whispers of “Do it again, Douglas!” While I was tolerant of Douglas’s antics, most of his other teachers were not amused. Some of them complained bitterly about him and wanted him removed from their classes.

Frances Hall was one of my fellow teachers at Forest Park Middle School. She was stern and highly structured, not someone to be trifled with. I still remembered this from my days as a student in her fourth-grade class. Mrs. Hall, too, taught English. She also put out a school newspaper each week. It cost a quarter, the proceeds of which went to the student council, which Mrs. Hall sponsored. Kids eagerly bought it because in addition to announcements about upcoming events, sports or school dances, jokes, a “word of the week” segment, and a featured faculty member of the week, it contained student birthdays and a heavily edited, student-written gossip column. “Does Susie B. like Billy C? A little birdie in third period band seems to think so!” All in all, it was a pretty darned good publication.

With great fanfare, Mrs. Hall added a feature to the paper, a puzzle of the week. She decided to put a difficult logic or reasoning puzzle in each week’s paper. The student who solved the puzzle and was first to give her the correct answer would receive a dollar. In the faculty workroom, Mrs. Hall told her colleagues that this would be a good exercise for the finer students in the school. These puzzles would separate the wheat from the chaff.

I arrived at school early each day, stopped by my mailbox in the office, and went to my classroom to prepare for the day and to be available to any of my students who might need to stop by for help on an assignment. One morning, Douglas, who normally trudged in late when he did come to school, burst into my room just as I had unlocked the door. I hadn’t even laid my things down on my desk yet.

“Mr. Whitwell, have you been by the office and checked your mailbox?” Douglas asked.

“Well, yes. Why?” I asked.

“Because today is Friday. The school paper comes out today, and I know Mrs. Hall puts a free copy in teachers’ mailboxes before she goes home on Thursdays. Do you have it?” He demanded.

“Yeah, I’ve got it. So?”

“Let me see it,” Douglas said. “I want to show you something. How would you like to make some easy money?”

“Look,” he said. “The dollar puzzle. It’s only 7:30 now. Student council kids will begin selling the paper at 7:45 in the cafeteria. Here’s the deal. You get here early each Friday. Pick up the puzzle. Hustle over here to your room, figure out the puzzle, and as soon as my bus gets here, I’ll run over here, and you give me a quarter and the answer to the puzzle. I’ll run over to the cafeteria and be the first in line to buy the paper. I’ll open it up and make a big show of looking at the puzzle. I’ll say stuff like, ‘Now let me see, if 3 times that is this, then that would be that multiplied by 2 would equal . . . I’ve got it!’ Then I’ll run up to Mrs. Hall’s room, give her the answer, and collect our winnings. Sometime during the day, I’ll slip over here to your room and give you your quarter back out of the prize.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “First off, I’m not doing this. This contest is for students. And besides, what do you mean, you’ll give me my quarter back? That means nothing for me and a dollar for you.”

“Look,” Douglas said. “As for the contest being for students, I thought you were a pretty smart guy. If you don’t think you can solve the problem, I’ll take this deal to Mr. Bonds. You are a young teacher. I know you don’t make much money, so I thought I’d do you a favor and give you first crack at this.”

“Look, I guarantee you I can solve the puzzle, but how are you helping me? I’m fronting you for the paper and only getting my own quarter back!”

“Mr. Whitwell. We’re running out of time here. We’ll argue about the split later; besides, I’m the one taking all the risks here. Mrs. Hall is never going to believe I solved this puzzle. She’ll probably make me take a lie detector test. Here, figure it out, explain it to me, and let’s give it a shot. What do you say? Are you in?”

Thus began my life in crime. Douglas’s attendance improved. He was in school every Friday. When his name was called each Friday as the winner of the puzzle contest, a lively debate began among the student body. Most students smelled a rat. “That guy’s a moron,” many said. “There is no way he is solving those puzzles.”

Some maintained otherwise. “I’m telling you, Douglas is a nut and a goofball, but that guy is smart!”

Meanwhile, I began to have second thoughts about aiding and abetting Douglas in this swindle. After four straight wins I had had enough. When Douglas blew into my room the next Friday, I was ready for him.

“Douglas. It is over. We’re turning ourselves in. We’re going straight. Here, I’ve written out a confession. I have signed it, and you must sign it, too.”

“Noooo!” Douglas wailed. “I knew I should have gone to Mr. Bonds with this!”

“No, no, no. First of all, Mr. Bonds couldn’t have solved these puzzles, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve set a horrible example for you, and we’ve got to come clean. Besides, I know Mrs. Hall. She was my fourth-grade teacher. I never got away with anything in her class. No one did. She will figure this out and leave us both for the buzzards. The woman has no sense of humor. Sign this. And here is four dollars. You owe me two. Take the confession and the money to Mrs. Hall right now.”

Dejectedly, Douglas left the room. I was a little worried about Mrs. Hall’s reaction. I was sure she would be angry with me, but I was really nervous that she would rip into Douglas. I went by her room after school. As soon as she saw me, she began laughing. “Gary,” she said, “this confession is the funniest thing I have ever seen.”

“I thought you would be angry,” I said.

“No! Newspaper sales are way up, and I just love Douglas. He is the sweetest thing!”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Douglas, sweet? Are we talking about the same kid? Big kid, overalls?”

“No, silly. Douglas, little kid with blond hair and a wonderful smile!”

“Oh, yeah. Well, Douglas and I are both sorry about this, but we have really enjoyed your puzzles. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to find someone.”

A few weeks after that, Douglas rolled breathlessly into my room one morning.

“Mr. Whitwell. Look, I know you’re still sore about our little scam, and I want to make it up to you. I have something I want to show you. Do you know what a chain letter is? Some people call it a pyramid. All you have to do is give me a dollar and then talk all of your students into...