CATEGORY: CENTRAL OREGON

Eric and Jari went to school at Tumalo Grade school.  The principal there was named Mr. Reid.  I had heard reports of him that were most unpleasant, not just from my own children but from the other mothers who lived on neighboring farms, who had in turn heard about him from their own children.  The report was that he was a humorless stickler for rules and regulations, and his modus operandi was punishment for the smallest infraction.  The worst thing I had heard was that Eric had witnessed him, in the boy’s locker room, severely discipline a boy by grabbing him around the throat, lifting him off the floor by his throat, and banging his head against the wall–twice.  The boy’s face had turned purple.

One day Eric did not come home at the usual time.  Imagining him hanging from a hook in the locker room with his face purple, I got in the car and drove to Tumalo.  On the way, I found him walking along the road.  Mr. Reid had kept him after school so that he missed the bus.  Mr. Reid had given Eric a note to me explaining the reason he was kept after school.  It was such a minor offense that I was furious.  I took Eric home where I called the school and asked to speak to Mr. Reid.  He was not there; I had to leave a message.

He called me back the next morning.  I told him I was Eric’s mother.  He said that he remembered meeting me a few weeks ago at a school function.  I told him that I remembered meeting him also.  I said, “I was surprised when I met you because, from what I had heard of you, I expected you to have a rule book imbedded in your lower lip, like a Ubangi.”  I was never very articulate.  I couldn’t believe that I had said such a thing.  Not only was I amazed, even as I heard myself saying it, that it was exactly what I wanted to say, but I was also taken aback that I had been so insulting to the Ubangi.  I went on to say that it was inexcusable of him to have kept Eric after school for such a minor offense.  I said I knew about the locker room incident, and that other mothers in the area and myself were thinking of making an appointment with the head of the school board to lodge an official complaint.  This was not true, but I loved saying it.  There was nothing but stunned silence at the other end of the line.  I hung up.

I can’t remember if there were any repercussions from my outburst.  But I do know that my verbal abuse of Mr. Reid was one of the highlights of Eric’s school life in Tumalo.   AND mine.