The Line
I grew up in Northern Ireland, although my family is English, and I spent my first years at primary school there, at an establishment that had lovely teachers but a fearsome, furious headmaster. But I was a good little boy, bit of a swat, did as I was told and had no great fear of him. Eventually my parents decided to move back to England and put the house up for sale and all that stuff which went over my head a bit since I was seven at the time.

During this period at school I happened to be in a classroom that was about the longest distance in the entire school from the library - it was all the way down the other end of the corridor and up a flight of stairs. But we used to be sent their regularly, in pairs, to get a book for the week.

Once on my weekly trip to the library I took a pencil with me, for reasons that now escape me. What I do remember is that on the trip back I held it in between my fingers in the hand that was gripping the bannisters on the stair, and then - as children will do - stroked the fingers along the wall. Just before we got to the classroom my companion turned back, looking shocked.

"Look what you've done" he said, in awe.

I turned and looked back to see that I'd unwittingly trailed a pencil line along the wall all the way from the library back to my classroom. We thought it was mildly amusing and went in and read our new books.

Next day in assembly, our furious fearsome headmaster devoted the entire thirty minutes to that pencil line. Of how he'd discovered it at home time. How he couldn't believe someone in his school could do such a thing. How the janitor had had to spend hours extra after school had closed and he was supposed to be at home scrubbing it off the walls bit by bit. But he spent most of the thirty minutes describing what he was going to do to the perpetrator when he or she was caught. Before the assembly, the sorry criminal was to have his or her trousers lowered and be caned in front of the entire school, a punishment of such severity that it had never before been carried out in those hallowed halls of learning.

It was the first time in my life that I ever got THE FEAR.

I spent the whole day in a complete, abject panic, unable to perform even simple tasks or respond particularly to the outside world. I ran it on autopilot, inwardly wholly consumed by terror. Only one other person knew that I was responsible for that line and sadly for me he wasn't being drawn on the subject of whether he'd dob me in or not.

That night I got home from school to be told, suddenly, that the house was sold and we'd be moving in two weeks.

It was the longest two weeks of my life. Every day going to school wondering if I'd been discovered, and was about to be thrashed in front of all my peers and, worse, have to go home and admit it to my parents and probably face another thrashing and weeks of being grounded.

But I made it. We left and as soon as we shut that front door for the last time, closing on an important chapter of my formative years and upbringing and leaving behind me all my friends and favourite haunts I felt no sadness at all, only a profound relief that we'd be going somewhere far enough away that the headmaster could never get me.

I still wonder sometimes if he ever found out, and fumed impotently in his office knowing that his quarry had got away clean.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 9 Sep 2011, 10:41, 1 reply)

He has now...
... but now you're a grown-up and he's a sad old man.
(edit: he's thought about that line at least once a week since it happened, and will do so the rest of his life)
(gordonjcp, Sat 10 Sep 2011, 11:57, closed)