The day I made a bold move in the school cafeteria

Transferring schools is something I did quite frequently growing up.  I attended seven different elementary schools, in fact.  Transferring schools, especially at mid-year, can be disorienting under the best of circumstances.  They all have different rules and punishments, all have different things and people to be sought out and avoided.  It can take quite some time to learn the policies and personalities of each new place.

I attended Hammond Elementary School for just a few months before moving on, but I remember it as one of the most silent, orderly, and stultifying places I have ever been.  I felt totally unsupported there and conceived that every adult had chosen as his or her role to uncover my stupidity and iniquity.  I do not believe I am far wrong; this conception was founded upon repeated experience with the people there.  I don’t know how this school’s culture had evolved in this way, but it was a good thing I only had to stay there a little while.  I was in and out in a few months.

I remember only one event from my time there.  It occurred in the cafeteria, which, like the rest of the school, was utterly silent and orderly at all times.  The cafeteria had one of those milk dispensers that was popular back then before we discovered that everything could be individually packaged for our sanitary snacking pleasure.  With these machines, one strode up to it, got a glass from a rack, positioned the glass under a little rubber spout, and lifted a heavy chrome ball on a lever to start the milk into your glass.  This was early in my schooling, and I had never seen this sort of contraption before.

Maybe it was the way the teachers always kept their eyes on us, ready to pounce on our slightest misdeed, but I somehow got the impression that I would not be allowed to get milk for myself the way the other kids did.  This went on for a number of days–I don’t know how many–until I finally said to myself, “Look at all those other kids getting milk.”  Nothing was happening to them, nothing out of the ordinary, anyway.  I remember making up my mind to go ahead and see what happened.  Not one to seek out negative consequences for my actions, I easily could handle them if they were forthcoming.

The cafeteria always was dimly lit, and the trees outside the windows kept the room dark almost all the time.  It probably had been a bright, airy place when the school was built in 1905, but that had been over 50 years earlier, and the place looked it.  The room was quite large with lots of open space.  The walls were made of those smooth ceramic blocks, the ones with rounded edges where they met the doors and windows.  The overall palette was something in the gold range with some chrome highlights, but the dim lighting kept the gold from ever shining except early in the morning when the sun came in at just the right angle.

Sitting alone at my lunch table (I was “the new kid, remember?), I decided the time had come, and whatever I got for my trouble, a glass of milk or a draconian punishment of the sort they dealt out there, I was going to take my chances.  I got up and walked over to the machine and went through the same procedure I had seen the other kids doing on those previous occasions.  The whole time I expected to hear one of the harsh voices the teachers used with us.  Worse yet, I wondered, what if one of them actually stirred herself and came up behind me to mete out rough justice on my transgressive hide?

To my surprise the cafeteria stayed silent and orderly.  No one spoke.  No one moved.  I glided through silence and silently went through the motions called for.  I returned to my seat.  The only turmoil was in my little soul.

I learned something valuable that day–something about proportionality and human nature, something about doing what is called for, regardless.

Years later, when my Little League baseball team practiced on the field behind Hammond School, I walked past it a couple of times a week.  Each time I approached the building, it was with just a little bit of residual dread.  I couldn’t help thinking that this would have suited some of those teachers just fine.

[googleMap name=”The site of Hammond Elementary, one of my many schools” description=”Sandy Springs, GA” width=”575″ height=”400″ directions_to=”false”]Mt Vernon Hwy & Johnson Ferry Rd NE Atlanta, GA 30328[/googleMap]

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