Where's My Pencil?

When I began the 1st grade in elementary school there wasn't any pre-school or kindergarten. So you just went without any preparation for getting ready to start school. The room was set-up with old fashioned wooden desks in a straight row. And the room housed both the 1st and 2nd grades. All the 1st graders sat on one side of the room and all of the 2nd graders sat on the other side. It was cool. There were probably 12 1st graders in my class.

The school building was a two story brick structure with a partial basement. The building housed both the elementary and high school. Elementary grades were on the first floor with the second floor housing the High School. There was a shop in the basement for industrial arts classes for the high school. The furnace was in the basement as well. There was no air conditioning system.

There was no cafeteria so everyone had to bring their lunch. There was a water fountain on each floor but that was it. We had no lockers but there was a coat rack in the hallway.

On the first day of school my mom put two brand new #2 wood pencils with erasers in my lunchbox. Dad had sharpened them for me. When I went to school and looked inside my lunch box to get my pencils they weren't there. I panicked. I cried. I bawled. I thought someone had stolen my pencils. I continued to cry and it just got worse. The teacher tried to console me but nothing would work. The teacher ended up taking me to the principals office and the secretary called my aunt Bea to come get me from school. Of course by the time she got there I had calmed down. I went with her anyway. I was just way too upset to stay at school.

When we got to aunt Bea's we talked about what on earth could have happened to my pencils. She asked to look in my lunch box. There was a big napkin in the bottom of the lunch box and when she looked under the napkin, there they were! My two new pencils.

I guess if I had used the napkin rather than wiping my fingers on my pants I would have found the pencils.