he Principals's Office an excerpt from School Daze

I remember grade three with fond memories. I will now share one of them with you. It was five minutes before the start of afternoon classes. The teachers all expected us to line up by grade level outside the school doors so that we could enter the school building in an orderly manner. We had a few jokers in our grade three class and I was one of them. For some reason the classes were entering the school a little slowly this afternoon. This occurred during the wintertime when snow and ice covered the ground. One of the kids in our grade three line slipped on the ice and accidentally bumped into the student in front of him. This started a domino like reaction. In a few minutes punches were being thrown and some kids had other kids in headlocks. The teacher on duty tried to stop this chaotic outbreak of physical violence by sending all the boys in our line to the principal's office. I believe there were seven boys in total sent to the office to await the appropriate disciplinary action.
When we arrived at the principal's office the school secretary asked all of us to take a seat on the long brown bench outside the office. Mr.A, the principal had his office door closed a but we could clearly hear him giving a student a tongue lashing. We then heard Mr. A tell the student, "Stick out your hand, Richard. This is the second time I've seen you today. You know my rule. If you get sent to the office twice in one day that calls for the strap." The next sounds we heard were the tsh, tsh, tsh, of the dreaded strap making contact with the palm of Richard's hand. This was quickly followed by the yelps of pain being uttered by Richard.
One of my buddies, Doug turned to me and said, Ken, this is the third time I've been sent to the office this month. That means that I automatically get the strap!" As tears streamed down Dougies's face I tried to console him by telling him that Mr.A. would probably not remember this. (to be continued).
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