Closing Assembly

As a kid who has always lived his life by the book, whenever my friends talk about how wayward and stubborn they were as kids, I never could relate or share similar stories because I had none. I'm sure most of them thought I was lying and probably pretending to be a nice guy who didn't do anything wrong as a child, which is a lie.

Anyways, as usual some of the boys today were reminiscing about high-school and the many things they did back then. Some talked about the number of times they left home but never got to school and would instead go to these shops where you pay money to play some PlayStation games, and some talked about actually getting to school but never staying till the end of class because they would always jump over the school fence.

They basically were talking about high-school and how naughty they were back then and to me, it was a fun conversation, one that I would had loved to contribute to but no matter how much I tried to think of one time I did do something I wasn't suppose to do, I came up with nothing. So I gave up and just decided to enjoy their stories instead.

But few hours later, after everyone had gone their separate ways, that was when my brain decided to be active and then I remembered one time I did runaway from school but was caught. Remembering that for some reason got me excited because these guys were beginning to make me feel bad for not being a bad kid but now that I do have a story to tell, they won't anymore, even though I wasn't entirely successful on my escape from school that many years ago.

_{Photo by TopSphere Media}

What had happened was that back then in high school, our classroom made use of these blackboard and our class teacher used white chalk to write on the board, so from time to time, we the students would have to look for things like grinded charcoal mixed with a little bit of water to rub on the board, so that it could be very dark and whenever the teacher writes on the board with his white chalk, we would see it clearly, because white shows clearly on black.

So on that faithful day, myself and another of my classmate had made up our mind to not wait for the closing assembly but instead run home immediately we hear the closing bell to go get some charcoal, so that we could quickly return back to school, darken the blackboard and then go home. And waiting for the closing assembly would just waste more of our time.

So we did just that. Immediately we both heard the closing bell, we both ran outside the gate and straight for our home but just as we got outside the gate, we saw our school proprietor stepping outside of his white car. If we had seen him on time, we both would had found a place to hide but we didn't. We saw him the same time he saw us and for us, it was already too late, so we just ran.

I remember him calling after us as we ran but none of us stopped to look back, we knew the fact that we were outside the school was already enough for us to get punished, so why not just commit the whole crime instead?

When we got home that day, I remember myself and my friend being so scared that we refused to go back to school that day. We no longer cared about our mission to darken the board, we just knew that returning back to school to get our backpacks that we had left behind because we had intentions to go back the first time was a no no now.

So we just stayed behind and I remember that day that every one of my classmate that walked past my home made sure to tell I and my friend how big of a mess we both were in. According to them, during the closing assembly, the proprietor had asked all the students to look at themselves and tell him the students that were in school that day but were not present in that closing assembly, and myself and my friend were singled out.

I ended up not going to school the next day because I was so scared, so I pretended to be sick and my mom allowed me to stay back, while my friend went and was punished. But then, missing one day of school wasn't going to make everyone forget everything, so the next day I went to school, I also got punished and that was it for me.

I never left school before closing assembly ever again.