The False Alarm
Janice Bumbalough Marler
I would like for those of you who are young men, middle aged men, or old men to shut your eyes and take yourselves back in time. Go back to the days of your youth. Go back to those days when you were explorers, to those days of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Inside each man is still a little boy. My heart yearns for those days when my son was a little boy. One of my fondest memories is the time he pulled the school fire alarm and dismissed the whole school.
In the fall of 1963, I had volunteered as a leader for a local brownie group. I didn’t have children old enough to be in the scouts, but thought this would give my four children good exposure to a wholesome life style. I enjoyed the outdoors and I knew they would too. My two oldest daughters loved working with crafts but the other two were entirely too young yet, and I could take them with me on day outings and camping trips.
In 1965 my son was a normal, curious four-year old boy. He loved exploring; he also loved taking things apart to see how they worked. It was a beautiful spring day in May, cherry trees were in bloom, robins were hunting worms for their new babies, and I was busy preparing for a Girl Scout Mother and Daughter banquet in the gymnasium of our local elementary school. We were creating flowers from colored tissue paper for the tables. I couldn’t find a baby sitter so I brought my son with me. He stayed in the gymnasium playing under the tables and with some of the tissue paper. It wasn’t long before he began wondering around the gym. I wasn’t paying any attention to him; anyone with small children knows their attention spans are very short and he was no exception.
We weren’t there very long before the fire alarm was activated. (It must have been around three o'clock). I looked toward the gymnasium door where the loud shrill sound was coming from. There standing, in front of the fire alarm, was my son. He was frightened out of his wits holding his hands over his ears. “Oh no, you didn’t!” My face must have been beet red, because all the blood my body produced had flowed to my ever ready pale face.
It was too late; the deed was done. Every teacher in the building ushered their students quickly to their pre-designated areas on the school lawn. Neither of the principles was on campus, but they were at the traffic light in front of the school waiting for it to turn green. They looked as each other in puzzlement, “Did you order a fire drill?” “No, did you?” “No. Perhaps it’s a real fire.” I met them at the door. They were relieved when I told them that my four-year old son had activated the alarm. I apologized for his actions, and assured them that he would never do anything like that again. The school normally dismisses at three-thirty, but it was so close to school being dismissed that both principals decided to let the students go home early. I know the students were happy, and I often wondered what their parents thought.
In September of 1965 my son was ready for kindergarten. I’m not sure they were ready for him. I volunteered to help with the schools ‘Fall Festival’. There were all kinds of booths. A cake booth, a cookie booth, craft booths, and a dunking machine. I was working the ‘fish booth’. Children would put a small plastic fish on their hook, put it over a wall. I would place a toy on the end of their fishing pole and remove their fish. It wasn’t long before I heard someone yelling, “Someone just dunked, Mr. Smith, (not his real name), and busted his lip!” Mr. Smith was the principal. I knew deep inside my soul it was my child. A mother knows these things. He had been standing beside the machine watching the balls hit their target; when it did, Mr. Smith would fall into a pit of straw. My son reached around and tripped the trigger while Mr. Smith was straddling the seat. He had not sat down yet. When the seat went down, so did Mr. Smith. When the seat came up it caught him under his chin busting his lip. He was not a happy camper. In that moment I knew my son had been placed on the top of Mr. Smith’s list.
He was enrolled in the afternoon class. One day, before school, I couldn’t locate him anywhere. I panicked. Going from house to house, and driving around the neighborhood, would not turn up my son. We had bought him a new pair of shoes that looked like workmen’s boots. He looked so handsome in his white tee-shirt, tan pants, crew-cut hair, and his new shoes. He was quite the little man. Remember the ‘Little Rascals’? He looked a lot like Spanky. When I couldn’t find him I called the police department and reported him missing. Two officers came to the house. “What is he wearing?” When I told them what he had on, they said they had seen a little boy matching my description walking down a busy street leading into our housing development. It wasn’t long before they brought him back to me. The officers began making excuses for him, “Its o’k. We get lost coming here too sometimes.”
I told them, “He wasn’t lost. He knew exactly where he was. He knows this neighborhood like the back of his hand.” They told me they observed him doing the duck walk. He was trying out his new shoes.
That summer a neighbor, who lived up the street from us, had two small boys that were pre-school, and a canary. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall if she was an inch, and full of spirit. Mrs. Jones had both boys in tow. Whew, she was hot! Screaming at me, she said, “Robert, (not his name), let my bird out of its cage!” I have never been the kind of mother that believed everything my children told me. Although I always admonished them to speak the truth with me, I knew they wouldn’t. This day I couldn’t get the truth out of my son. “Did you let Mrs. Jones bird out of its cage?” “No mommy.” “Robert, what have I told you about telling me the truth? I’m going to ask you again. Did you let Mrs. Jones bird out of its cage?” “No mommy.” I decided to try another approach. “Robert, what did Mrs. Jones bird do when it got out of its cage?” “It flew all around the room.” “I thought you said you didn’t let her bird out.” He just hung his head and I assured Mrs. Jones I would take care of the matter.
First grade was interesting. One day someone wrote a dirty word in the boy’s bathroom. Now I wonder who that could have been. (F.Y.I: It was my son that reported the incident to the janitor) He came home from school proclaiming, “Someone wrote a dirty word in the boy’s bathroom.” “It wasn’t you, was it?” “No. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” A few days later I found out it was him. After I corrected him at home, I took him to see Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith had a long paddle in his office. (In that day and time the principals were allowed to use the paddle). He told him, “It’s a lucky thing your mother corrected you, because this paddle has your name on it.”
So much has been taken out of the teachers hands over the years and I’m afraid we are reaping the results today.
After I became a police officer at the age of forty-four, I used that same ploy on those I arrested. The first time I used that tactic the suspect asked me, “Ms. Janice, how did you know I took that radio?” “Because, you just told me you did.”