THE DOCTOR'S REGENERATIONS - BY DANBURY MINT....

  

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING The 'BRUSH-OFF' - PART FOUR Of SCHOOLTIME SCANDALS ...

It had been raining, and I could see through the classroom windows that it was beginning to get dark outside.  The rain-lashed footpaths reflected the yellow lights of the school building in their shimmering, mirrored surface, and as the art lesson neared its end, I started gathering my stuff together in preparation for the bell which would signal our release.

One thing was wrong however; my schoolbag was absent from its accustomed place under my desk.  "Right, who's got my schoolbag?" I challenged, standing up and addressing the line of classmates to my side.  "Is this it?" came a murmur from the far end.  "Yeah, pass it along to me!" I said, and the bag was handed from one pupil to another until it reached me.

No fool was I!  First thing I did was check the contents to ensure that nothing was missing.  In actual fact, the reverse was true - at the bottom of my bag was a class paintbrush which didn't belong there.  "Please Miss," I said to the teacher, "someone's put a paintbrush in my schoolbag."  As it turned out, I'd have been better placing the brush in its pot with the others and saying nothing, but perhaps I was fuelled by a subconscious desire to solicit an acknowledgement of my 'virtuous' nature.

Mrs. Barclay (dubbed 'Screamer Barclay' by we pupils) seemed unperturbed.  "Put it in its pot!" was all she said - so I did.  However, at lesson's end, she took a count of the brushes and discovered that some were missing.  She decided that a search of the boys was in order, but not the girls.  (Obviously, in much the same way that ol' QUEEN VICTORIA reputedly couldn't imagine women ever indulging in 'unnatural desires', Mrs. Barclay clearly considered females incapable of taking something that didn't belong to them.  The settlements often arrived at in today's divorce courts suggest otherwise.)

Mr. McLEAN, the head art teacher, was sent for, and when he arrived, 'Screamer' explained the situation about the missing brushes.  She concluded her summary of events by saying - and these are her actual words - "A brush has already been found in Gordon Robson's schoolbag."  I regarded this as a gross misrepresentation of the facts, so I interjected and said "Yeah, and it was me who found it!"

I wasn't the subject of any undue attention as a result of Mrs. Barclay's less than stringent recounting of the facts, and it may be that it hadn't been her intention to cast me in the role of transgressor, but nevertheless it riled me at the time and still does whenever I think of it today, more than 40 years after the fact.  Reputations often rest on such gossamer threads that I'm always prepared to stand up and defend mine at the drop of the proverbial hat.

Now, I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere, but I'll leave you to figure it out for yourselves.

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