The class was unruly. Everybody had been sitting for too long. Little kids shouldn't be forced to sit in one spot at a desk for an entire afternoon.
Luckily, today’s modern schools allow kids to move around and even to interact with each other. I’m over 70: schools were different 70 years ago.
The restless energy was about to explode.
Somebody scrunched up a small piece of paper and threw it at our teacher when she had her back turned. Everyone giggled. Then another classmate did the same thing. The teacher turned around quickly each time - but not quickly enough to see who the culprit was.
Soon everybody was giggling and throwing paper and the teacher was getting more and more angry.
I sat there, at my desk near the front, an outsider, not really part of it.
Everyone urged me to throw a paper too.
"Throw a paper" they whispered loudly, "Throw! Throw!"
I wanted to belong. Someone put a scrunched paper in front of me. But I wasn't clever like the others.
By the time I threw my paper, the teacher had turned around. She caught me - and nobody else.
I had to stay after school and write on the blackboard:
"I will not throw paper at the teacher".
All the other kids left. No one spoke up for me.
At first I sat there stubbornly.
But finally the situation wore me down, and I took a piece of chalk and slowly scribbled the sentence again and again.
My parents both came to the classroom.
I don't know if they were called by the school.
Or maybe they came to the school to find me.
When I saw them in the doorway, I ran to my mummy and threw my arms around her waist.
My crying made my voice incomprehensible.
The principal came in too. They all spoke for awhile and then my parents took me home. I never had to finish covering the entire blackboard. I was so relieved.
The next day, the kids came straggling in as usual.
Nobody said anything about me to the teacher.
Nobody said anything to me.
Did they even remember how they all left me there to pay for their misdeeds?
The worst part?
My mummy and daddy never asked me what happened. They never asked me my side of it.
I waited many days for them to ask me so I could finally explain: it wasn't me who threw all those bits of paper.
To this day, 70 years later, I still wonder why didn't they ask me?