Grace Patillo and I shared
a grade 5 class for a while. I was
teaching some intermediate subject in the afternoon (gr.7 History? gr.7 or 8
Science? I forget.) and Grace had my
grade 5 class during that time. One day, my
attendance register disappeared.
"So what?" you
might ask. Ahhh, but in those
pre-computer days, a teacher's register was a legal document and the only copy
of daily attendance; which made it the only proof for how school boards received
their BIU - Basic Income Unit funding from the government - i.e. each day that
a student was present in school = grant money. Every classroom in Ontario was given a register. At the front were
pages of written instructions and examples dedicated to ensuring its proper
completion by the homeroom teacher. I
submitted my register to the office monthly, and it had to be neat and accurate
or I would incur the wrath of our secretary, whom we had nicknamed Cerberus.
And my register was now lost; had been for almost a month and it was now overdue.
Grace and I shared a
large teacher's desk - the left hand drawers were mine, and the right were
Grace's. Weeks before, I had asked Grace
if she'd seen my register. "Oh, no,
Rick, you've lost your register? You do know
that it's a legal document?"
"Yes, I know, and I
haven't lost it. I just can't find
it. I've been keeping my attendance on sheets of paper until it resurfaces. Have
you seen it?"
Grace had not and she went
through everything looking for it.
"Mr. Farrer, your
register has not been turned in," the PA announced one day after
school. "Please bring it to the
office." The time had come to attempt to cross The River Styx.
"I need your
register," my secretary said.
"Um, I can't find
it," I stammered.
"You do know that it's
a legal document?" I nodded my
head, with an appropriate amount of submissiveness. "Do you have any idea of the hoops I
have to jump through if I have to get a new one?
The province controls these things." I just stared. "Have you looked everywhere?"
"Yes," I
answered, "I've looked everywhere it could possibly be." Her unfailing stare caused me to add,
"...but I'll look again."
And
so I did. I tore my classroom apart,
once again. At home that weekend I went
through everything, anywhere I would have placed my school stuff, and even some
places where I wouldn't have put school work.
Nothing.
Back at school and dreading
my return visit to the Guardian of the Gates of the Underworld, I decided to
lie low and wait until the end of the day.
Just after lunch, Grace
appeared in my room as usual, but with a peculiar expression on her face. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I took home the
students' journals to mark over the weekend.
Guess what I found at the bottom of the pile?" She reached into her bag and removed my long
sought after Holy Grail! "I had
the notebooks collected by a student," Grace continued, "who put them
on the desk. I picked them up and placed
them in the bottom drawer. The register
must have been there under that pile all along."
Grace apologized and
offered to make amends by bringing it to the office and explaining for me. I told her not to bother because I still had
to fill in all the absences from my pieces of paper before I could hand it in
anyway.
And so, later that day, I
walked determinedly into the office and handed in my register.
"So you found it," Cerberus exclaimed. "You know, I've never had anyone lose a
register before. Do you realize how close I was to having to go through all that replacement rigamarole?
It's a legal document, you know.
So where'd you find it? And how did you manage to lose it in the first place?"
A Harry Chapin song came to
mind:
Another man might have been
angry,
Another man might have been
hurt,
Another man never would
have let her go...
"I didn't. Grace lost it."
Yup, I threw her under the bus.
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