The Cherry Bomb

When you were in second or third grade did you ever-- do youremember-- did you ever have your teacher say, "I have to go down to Mr. Benson's office for two minutes. I'm going to leave the door open and Mrs. Hagen across the hall will be listening. You be good and quiet and do your work. I'll be right back!"
I remember.
I hated it when they made some teacher's pet the tattle-tale. Still, sometimes we were reasonably quiet. Sometimes maybe we weren't.
In high school it was a little different. It could be that when a teacher left the room it would get noisy, or things might be thrown around the room, maybe someone's lunch or a pretty girl's books.
Usually when classes changed and students filed into a class room the teacher would be there waiting, because the class would be in her home room.
But sometimes we would have to wait for the teacher to come. It could get very interesting if the teacher's coming was delayed more than a minute or two. We would think, "Maybe she isn'tcoming at all!"
For a little while when I was a junior in Akron North High, way back in the late 1940s, we had a substitute English teacher, and she was almost always late for our class, which met on the fourth floor. She usually arrived with her arms full of books and papers, out of breath, scolding us, good-naturedly for the most part, into silence.
One awful day she was later than usual, and the class was noisier than usual. Erasers were flying, books were sailing. It probably doesn't do any good to tell you that, truthfully, I usually did not take part in the chaos, although I can't say I didn't enjoy it. Anyway, on this fateful day one boy-- Stanley M__-- produced a cherry bomb from his pocket. It was big enough that it would have been reason the call the bomb squad today. Even then it commanded great respect. The room got very quiet.
Stanley lit a match and we held our breaths. The windows were open-- they were the kind that had three panes, and the middle pane swung out from the top. Stanley evidently intended to light the bomb in the classroom and throw it out the window toward the athletic field three stories below. We couldn't believe it-- but Stanley lit the bomb-- and threw it-- and it hit the window pane above the open window and bounced back into the middle ofthe room, under the desks, hissing.
Just at that very moment our teacher came breathlessly into the quiet room-- quiet except for the hissing-- with her arms full of books. But before she had a chance to worry about why we were quiet,or what the hissing sound was
---KA- BOOM!--
the cherry bomb exploded,and instantly the room was full of smoke, and then there was total silence again.
Our teacher did not drop her armload of books. She did not miss a step. She simply went over to the desk and sat down and put her face on the books and papers she had been carrying. I think it may have been a full five minutes that no one said a word, no one made a sound.
I imagine today the police would be called and someone would be expelled from school, and there certainly would be a lawsuit. But her awful silence, and the fact that we were all shocked and stunned was punishment for us all, even Stanley the bomb-thrower. All these many years later I still feel that little woman's pain and disappointment at the chaos that greeted her coming. But there is still enough dirty rotten teenager in my old bones that I cannot help laughing when I think of strange Stanley and the hissing cherry bomb and the totally speechless kids when that door opened and in walked . . .