Caught Playing Hookey

In the fall of 1959, I had just started the 10th grade. I was 15, and didn't care much for school. I was younger than my classmates, and didn't fit in very well. Besides, I was skinny (believe it or not!), and had a really flashy set of Mortimer Snerd buck teeth. All these things combined to make me wish I could be invisible.

We lived in La Marque, Texas, right outside Galveston, and many of the townspeople were of German or French origin. I mentioned in an earlier blog about the name of my high school principal, Mr. Schlegelmilch. My boss, at the grocery store where I worked after school, was Mrs. Meisetschlager. A lot of the names were a mouthful, to say the least. The high school I attended wasn't bad -- I was just not very happy being there.

One fine, sun-shiny day, after arriving at school, a friend of mine from the next street over --- Bobby Frankovitch -- who was a year older and much more mature (NOT) than I was, talked me into skipping school with him. So, we skipped out and left school in the early afternoon. As we meandered down neighborhood streets, heading in a general direction toward the neighborhood where we lived, we stopped and picked ripe fruit from someone's kumquat tree (a delicious orange-like fruit, with an edible skin -- oval shaped). We loaded up on fruit and then continued slowly walking down the street. It was warm, so we both took off our shirts and tied them around our waists. We couldn't go home --- our Moms were stay-at-home Moms and we didn't want to get 'busted', so we picked a vacant lot next to a large, 2-story home and made ourselves comfortable under the shade of a big moss-festooned oak tree.

We were enjoying ourselves immensely, when, suddenly, a really old, very thin woman, wearing an apron and brandishing a broom, came from the 2-story house and told us, in decidedly unfriendly tones, to 'march ourselves right back to school'. I was not brought up to be disrespectful to my elders, but Bobby had no such inhibitions. He talked back to the lady, and she swatted him with the broom. Bobby grabbed the business end of the broom and didn't turn loose for a few seconds. The little old lady didn't like that a bit. She returned to the house. We continued laying out on the ground, but then decided that maybe we should move on down the street.

We continued walking and eating fruit, and before long, a police cruiser, with lights flashing, pulled up next to us and told us to get in. As it turned out, the little old lady with the broom ran a boarding house for retired school teachers! We really could pick great places to skip school, swipe fruit and take naps!

"Oh, great, I thought!

We've done it now! We're gonna get in a lot of trouble!"

Bobby was strangely unconcerned, and said not to worry about it. He said that he had skipped school before. "All they'll do is bust us a few times", he said. My eyes got large. "We're gonna get busted?," I asked. Bobby laughed. I guessed, right about then that Bobby's rear end was a little more calloused than mine was. I didn't want to get in trouble, and I really didn't want to get busted!

The police officer pulled right into the circle driveway on the back side of the high school, and, as bad luck would have it, classes had turned out, and everybody was heading for their last class of the day. Everybody in school, it seemed, was an eye-witness to our shame. As we were escorted to the Principal's office by a big police officer, in uniform, packing all the usual menacing weapons that police officers carry, we were really quite a sight.

Bobby was expelled from school from three days. He had indeed 'played hookey' before-- twice before, as it turned out! Claude Hall, the Principal, then asked me to enter his office. I couldn't have been more embarrassed. Principal Hall was one of the deacons at the La Marque church of Christ, where my parents and I were members. I felt such shame at my public reproach! When he had me seated in his office, he looked at me with those unsmiling, baleful eyes and said: "Gene, I suppose you think I'm mad at you for the stunt that you and Bobby pulled today." That statement was more than a statement--it was a question -- so, I responded with:
"Yes, sir," to which he replied, after a pregnant pause: "Well, Gene, I'm not mad...I'm just really disappointed." Upon hearing those words, I felt like whale poop at the bottom of the ocean...that, according to others of my age at La Marque High School, was 'as low as you can go.'

I was sent home for the rest of the day, and arrived home to my Mom, waiting at the front door, her face full of embarrassment, anger, concern, and sorrow at my having 'pulled such a stunt'. I was too old and too big for her to whip, so she gave me the silent treatment until Dad got home. When he arrived, he ruined the rest of my day...

Needless to say, I had to walk the straight and narrow at home, school and church --but, before long, the shame and ridicule began to die down. I went back to being an awkward kid who never got in trouble. I worked at Evans grocery store, and became pretty good at catching shoplifters. I felt important at home because I bought the family groceries during the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grades, and my freshman year at Fort Worth Christian College, with my 6-day a week jobs at grocery stores in La Marque and in Dallas, after school and on Saturdays. That was important to my sense of worth as a family member. I was never a good student-- I was not interested in school-- but I felt validated and needed, and that was a good thing, I think.

Bobby and I were, after a time, allowed to spend time together again-- catching and raising snakes that we caught in the vacant lots near our home. I was not allowed to keep the snakes that were poisonous (Bobby kept all of those, because his parents didn't mind), but the two of us put together quite a collection of beautiful specimens. Catching snakes was pretty much the sum total of my leisure time. To instantly identify a startled snake, and lunge to grab it safely without harming it meant that I had to be quick, and I was. Snagging snakes helped me develop some awesome reflexes! I decided to start lifting weights and then selected self-defense instruction in school as an elective in gym class. Still skinny and scrawny at first, I found something that caught my interest and in which I found an aptitude.

The next year, a freak accident in shop class elevated my standing at school (read about it in one of my earlier posts), and I was then accepted among my peers. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had been accorded a degree of respect from a number of guys at school who had previously picked on me with impunity. That bullying all stopped-- all of it. I began to enjoy school and never again thought of 'playing hookey!' The self-defense training and weight lifting gradually bore fruit. Previously, I had no direction without or within, but, over time, I began to focus on what I enjoyed and then everything -- at home -- at school and at church, began to come together for me. I began to feel a little better about myself and became a happier kid. Life became sweet -- and has been for pretty much all of my adult life!

God is good, and although each of us progresses through life with 'fits and starts' on our part -- sometimes 'one step forward and two steps back' -- He is faithful to mold us and guide us if we'll just let Him. Although I never 'played hookey' again in school, during my adult life, there have been occasions when I have played hookey with God, and have not always lived up to the expectation that God has always had for me. I have played spiritual hookey, and have lost the focus that I have always known that would have been more pleasing to God. God has not punished me over the years, however, and when I fail, I hear, through his Eternal Word, the voice of God telling me: "No, Gene, I'm not mad, I'm just really disappointed." Ouch! Those soft-spoken words --now the words of God echoing in my mind -- rather than the stern words of a high school Principal, prompt me to try to live better each day. I'm so glad that God is patient and forgiving!

What about you...do you sometimes 'play hookey' with the responsibilities that God has put before you?