An Unexpected Memory

It's possible I wrote about Bob Lapierre before. He was an eighth-grade student of mine at Chestnut Junior High.  As I remember, he was two years older than the other kids in the class.  The kids called him Laps.  Of course, I never called him Laps. I might even have called him Robert, yet now I think of him as Laps.

The class was made up of fourteen years old,  so Laps must have been sixteen. I know he drove a car.  As I remember, his father was a car dealer or had an auto repair or body shop, something like that. I believe that Laps at sixteen led the life of an adult.

He had a wonderful attitude toward life. That is what I most remember about him.  He was good-natured, and I believe he loved life. He could have taught me a thing or two.

Why am I thinking of Laps now?  I have no idea. But I am having poignant thoughts about him.

Laps was not academic, but he was smart. I want to tell you that I bet you anything he turned out to be a really good man.

This particular eighth grade class was not an easy class.  Monday mornings I would start out asking about their weekend. The intention was to relax the class and make the Monday morning transition to school a little easier. I suppose it did help. That approach certainly did ease me.

This one Monday morning, Laps said he had played a certain game whose name I did not know the meaning of, or I may have known the meaning and didn't let on, didn't let on even to myself. When the class guffawed, of course, certainly I knew then that for sure Laps had said something not appropriate for school. Still, I pretended unawareness.

I think I was playing a game within a game.  It's possible that I did not know the meaning, and, only now, in retrospect do I think I really did know. Yet I do think that at the time that I did have some idea, and I was playing innocent which, at the time, could have been the right and only thing to do. At yet now I feel duplicitous and I may have felt duplicitous then as well. Certainly, I presented one face to the class and Laps, and another when I met with the principal and assistant principal and told them what had happened.

This was one school where the principal and the assistant principal appreciated my teaching right off the bat. I appreciated them, and they appreciated me.

Mr. McCue, Principal, and Mr. Kenefick, Assistant Principal, were in the coffee room when I went there for my break. This sounds so bizarre, but in this coffee room where teachers would go for the one class period a day when they didn't have a class, a Well Baby Clinic was going on there at the same time. There was a doctor and a nurse and babies and the babies' mothers and a table of teachers and coffee and cigarettes. All that is irrelevant to the story, but it does add a certain flavor, doesn't it?

Anyway, I mentioned the incident with Laps to Mr. McCue and Mr. Kennefick. Again, I was playing the innocent, and betraying this boy. I don't know what else I could have done, and yet I wasn't being true to myself or to Laps.

In any case, Laps was summarily expelled from school.

It turns out that Laps didn't mind a bit. He didn't feel betrayed in the slightest. He was glad. If I remember correctly, he came to say goodbye to me and, and thanked me. He certainly held no grudge. He was happy.

Chestnut Street Junior High School was an old school, and it was on a city street, and cars whizzed by all day.

After his expulsion,  whenever Laps would drive by in his blue car, he would honk and wave, and I would wave back. Seeing him drive by, carefree and happy, lifted my heart. I believe that Lap's honk and wave cheered the classes too.

Laps was a happiness-maker. He sure knew how to live without regret, without animosity etc. I suppose it's fair to say that he knew how to live in the present, something his former English teacher is still working at.

How I would love to see Laps drive by in his car and get a friendly wave from him  now. It would mean so much to me now! I did appreciate his friendliness then, yet I would appreciate it even more now.

Laps is forever transfixed in my mind as he was at the age of sixteen.

What was his life at twenty-five, I wonder. And forty? What is Laps doing now?  Does he ever think of Mrs. Wendroff? He wouldn't because he knew me as Miss Solomon! Does Chestnut Junior High School even still exist? Or does it perhaps just still exist only in my memory?