Chapter 15

It was still raining on Tuesday, but not as bad as yesterday. I ran again. My running shoes were still wet from yesterday. Even though I had dry socks on the wet started coming through. Once the socks were damp they started to chafe, so I cut my run in half to avoid blisters. Luckily I was doing a loop that took me by the house twice.

I would have to buy a second pair of shoes to give them time to dry out. It was about time I bought new ones anyway. My feet must still be growing because these are getting tight.

At school, I went straight to Mr. Gordon’s office. The student in charge of the front desk Gail Innis must have wondered what trouble I had got into. She let Mr. Gordon know I was there. She lingered at the door but Mr. Gordon asked me to close it behind me. I handed him the letter and check.

He read the letter and smiled, “I will be sending your parents a thank you letter, but I know you were the driving force behind this. You are growing up to be a fine person Ricky Jackson”

I left his office feeling ten feet tall.

During homeroom, the morning announcements were made. When it was announced that detention had been reinstituted along with an after school study hall which any student could attend at their discretion there were groans throughout the school. Unfortunately, I started laughing, laughing aloud.

Miss Bales came to my desk, “Since Mr. Jackson thinks detention is so funny he can spend two days there.”

She then wrote out a detention slip that I would have to have signed by the detention teacher and returned to her.

Life is not fair!

On the way to my first class, I ran into Gail Innis.

She stopped me, “That was a good thing your family has done. I had to get the check ready for deposit.”

I just held up my detention slip. She looked at it and started to get red in the face. She couldn’t hold it any longer she burst out laughing. She turned around and took off. I chased after her.

“Where are you going,” I asked as she kept moving.

“To tell Mr. Gordon he will love this.”

I stopped and gave up.

I remembered reading, “No good deed goes unpunished.” But so quick!

Before the school day was over the word was out. It was too good of a story not to share. I wasn’t even upset, I did see the irony.

I don’t know how many kids said, “Heard you got detention tonight Rick.”

Then the twerps would laugh.

It was all worth it when I entered the study hall after school to serve my time. Steve Simmons and several other boys and girls were sitting as a group. As I came into the room they burst into a round of applause. Even Mr. Hurley joined in.

I spent my time writing Judy a letter telling her how I got into detention. The more I wrote the better I felt. Yeah, I had taken a little grief but I felt really good about helping those kids out.

Then a reporter, Sam Clemens of the Hi-Life, caught me as I was leaving the building. Like everyone else in school he had heard that my family had paid for the detention program to be revitalized and that I was the first student to get nailed.

He wanted to know why we did it.

At this point, there was no reason not to so I shared the whole story with him leaving out Steve Simmons’s name. I asked him if he knew where the school board was directing the money they had diverted from the program.

He had no idea. I told him to read the proposed budget and see what capital improvements were there and who might benefit from them.

Sam promised me he would. I didn’t doubt him. Yes, his name is really Sam Clemens I don’t make stuff like that up.

When I got home and told my parents about my day they were in stitches. Dad thought it great that I had given Sam Clemens enough of a hint that he could figure out what was going on.

We made Thanksgiving decorations during our Spanish lessons. Using construction paper we cut out many-colored feathers for a turkey’s tail. Then we cut out fruit for a cornucopia. Mary got to paste the fruit in. I noticed she kept her fingers licked clean from the flour-based paste we were using to glue everything together.

As you may have guessed the younger kids set the direction of the lesson. It didn’t matter what we did as long as we practiced Spanish. Besides I am certain that someday I will need to be able to talk about a Mitología in Spanish maybe when ordering a basket of fruit.

The boys made headbands with feathers to be Indians. I made a pilgrims hat. It really looked neat. It is a shame that it fell apart when I put it on. My brothers and sister thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen, brats.