Our new fourth grade teacher, a lanky man with a Hawaiian shirt, sits with his feet on his desk, crunching a carrot stick and flipping through a magazine. As we file in, he repeats, “Take a seat,” with each turn of a page. He gets up and writes on the chalkboard: Mr. Legler. “Discipline: that’s what you’ll learn in my classroom.” His flip-flops whap as he paces. He holds up a clipboard. “This is a zap board. It will be your friend or enemy.”
I twirl a wave at the nape of my neck and glance around. Everyone looks as perplexed as I am.
“To work off zaps, you can do schoolwork,” he points at the textbooks, “or write grammatically correct notes to each other. And you can clean. Questions?”
Every hand snaps up. Kids ask about homework, tests, trips to the library… Finally, he calls on me.
I chew the inside of my lip. “Why do you give zaps?”
“And you are?”
“Peggy.”
“That’s a good question, Peggy.” He removes his glasses. “Several times a day, we’ll have silent time. You make a noise; you get zapped.” Our eyes widened.
“Zap!” he hollers, then pretends to mark on his clipboard. “And if you have zaps at the end of the day, you’ll stay after to work them off.”
Everyone blurts out questions.
“OK, people. I’m gonna let this slide now, but in the future, blurting out earns you a zap.
We snap our hands down.
“There will be free time. You may leave your seat, talk to your neighbor, etc. But when I say silent time, heads go on your desks.”
Part of me is thrilled about not having to do schoolwork, but another part is freaked out. Teachers always say I talk too much. I already know silent time is going to be a challenge.
One of the kids figures out that when a ruler is lodged a certain way in the desktop, it makes a loud snap when it’s opened. The knowledge spreads through the classroom.
We organize when Mr. Legler is out of the room. We sit—our desks primed. SNAP! Our desk symphony pierces as he walks in. We roar with laughter.
“Zap! Zap! Zap! You’re all getting three.”
Once I stop giggling, I try pulling my ruler out. I tug and pull, but it doesn’t budge. I pull harder and harder, then… whammo! I jam myself right in the eye with the end of the ruler. A huge egg forms in the corner of my eye.
“Mr. Legler. Mr. Legler!” Kathy cries. “Peggy’s hurt.”
Mr. Legler rushes over and examines my eye. I can’t open it. It burns.
“Alright people. I’m taking Peggy to the nurse. Silent time until I get back?”
Because the pain keeps my eyes closed, Mr. Legler guides me to the nurse’s office. “You doing OK, trooper?” I don’t see how I’m a trooper—I did it to myself. I expect to get a lecture, but instead he’s nurturing. “I’m OK,” I say. “Only hurts when I open my eye.” He brushes his hand over my forehead and smiles with warmth, an expression I’d never seen from him. I’d only seen a tough disciplinarian and wise man.
The nurse drives me to the E.R., and my mom meets us there. I was lucky. A fraction of an inch closer and I would’ve lost an eye, the doctor said.
Coming back to school after Christmas break, we learned that Mr. Legler was a fraud. He’d forged his teacher’s license. We got assigned a real teacher, who was nice enough. But the class felt hollow without Mr. Legler.
More than 50 years later, I can still picture him reclined back in his desk, clipboard in his lap, snacking on raw veggies. I’ll never forget how he comforted me in that scary situation, and I’ll never forget that zap board.
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