I remember the first time I got in trouble at school. It was in the cafeteria. Grade school. We sat at those massively long tables, 8 rows of ’em, with the teachers patrolling the edges like border collies.
I’m not sure how it started but Matty P, my best friend in the whole world, threw a napkin at me. So I threw it back at him.
We didn’t get much farther than that before Mr. Serbent — a hulk of a man — called us out, well me…
“MR FLAMER!”
He hovered over me in his short-sleeved button-up, face already read in preparation for the yelling.
“YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY TO THROW THINGS AT LUNCH?”
I was 8, so like, yeah.
“SINCE YOU AND YOUR FRIEND LIKE THROWING THINGS SO MUCH, HOW ABOUT THROWING THAT NAPKIN INSTEAD OF GOING TO RECESS. “
It wasn’t a question.
He put us, of all places, in the back hallway of the kitchen, behind where the lunch ladies served food, a place we’d never been. No student ever has.
He pointed a finger at me. “YOU STAY RIGHT HERE. THE TWO OF YOU.” And he slammed the balled up napkin into my hand.
Matt Shrugged.
I waited for Mr. Serbent to walk away and threw it right at Matt’s face.
He dodged it and laughed. Ran back a few paces to retrieve its, stealing a quick glance into one of the doorways. Then launched the ball at my head. I ducked. And laughed.
It went on like this: trying to peg each other in the head. And of course the crotch.
We did just about everything you could with a napkin: played volleyball, made hoops with our arms and shot three-pointers, un-crumpled it and threw it up, which made it nearly impossible to catch. But, boy, was it fun to watch the other guy try.
We probably threw that thing 100 times in a 100 different ways. Taking breaks to let the hair-netted lunch ladies walk down the hall and go wherever that hall led. They’d come back with massive bins of beans and crates of milk.
For whatever reason, they didn’t treat us like criminals. One offered us milk, the good kind — chocolate. We got smiles.
It was all good. We tried kicking it to each other, punting a napkin ball. Making field goals with our arms.
Then, Mr Serbent showed up again, like a Gorgon coming up through the earth. He pierced our silliness with second-nature disdain.
“YOU BOYS ARE STILL HERE? IT’S SECOND RECESS ALREADY.”
Meaning we not only skipped our recess, we were now skipping our afternoon class. To throw a napkin.
We stood motionless.
“WELL, GO ON, GET TO CLASS. But I want you to think about WHAT LESSON you’ve learned today.”
We took off in a fast walk, waiting until we were out the door to break into a full sprint, giggling like crazy. I jumped up and kicked my feet off the wall. Matt slapped a poster.
Lesson? Um, yeah. We learned some lessons.
Anything can be fun when you’re with your friends.
You can do a lot with a little, even if you only got a napkin and a hallway.
Cafeteria workers work hard.
No one can make you feel bad about yourself. Only you can do that.
Even when you think you’ve exhausted all of your creativity, there’s always more. There’s always a new way to play.
I don’t know about Matty P., but I felt a little lighter in class that day, like I’d just discovered a secret that even Mr. Serbent didn’t know about, like I was smarter than the people who wrote my thick, heavily indexed textbooks.
The authoritarian voice of the teacher fell a little softer on my shoulders. I raised my hand a lot more after that. I wasn’t afraid to be wrong.
I’d endured the reverberating reprimand of Mr. Serbent and come out the other side, not just alive, but more confident, less fearful of the rules.
As if handed a paper crane to unfold, unaware that there would be a message inside, but invigorated by the unfolding itself.
Some things take time to learn, but you can still celebrate the beginning of the discovery.