An early memory I will always cherish is the day, in first grade, when the entire school met outside on the playground to hear our principle give his yearly farewell address, his last opportunity of the year to tell his students how proud he was of them and to put the fear of God into them if they dared disrupt his "No Accidents" record he had maintained this entire long year. And the year before. And the one before that and so on, so seemingly deep into the past that a young mind imagined caves and clubs and saber-toothed cats.
There were roughly twenty days of school left and if any of us engaged in the most minimally "risk-associated" behavior we would never, ever, hear the end of it. This was our man's most prized award and he coveted it with a fervor that would make the most ardent parent-cum-football coach blush. We were reminded not to run in the hallways or in the parking lot or on the sidewalks home, to ensure that reflectors and lights were installed on our bicycles, to watch out for slippery ice in the wintertime, to watch out for cars and look both ways before crossing the street. His nerves became frayed at this time of the school year.
The end was near and so was the prize. "And so kids, just remember the importance of staying accident-free", quipped the principle. "Safety first", and with this last utterance Mrs. Kruger, who taught the kindergartners and had done so for so many years that she would reminisce with a look of both disgust and quiet resignation, began choking on a piece of chicken from a serving she had brown-bagged on that day. She looked a bit startled at first and she tried to cough the offending bite of fowl from her throat but to no avail.
She began to look around crazily. She began to heave, the muscles of her diaphragm desperately seeking relief. She became stunned and then started to panic, considering each staff member standing. They, facing the students, behind our principle looked at the teacher with a bewildered embarrassment. She became terror-stricken when at last someone broke the mesmerizing spell Mrs. Kruger had cast.
As the teacher dropped to her knees, Mr. Whitson, the handy-man, janitor and fill-in gymnastics instructor, lifted her up like a rag doll, put his arms around her midsection, held his own hands tightly fisted just beneath her ribcage and gave her a quick, defining squeeze. The offending piece of chicken flew from Mrs. Kruger’s mouth, sailed several yards through the air and struck poor Theodore Everett Young directly in the eyeball; his right-side eyeball if you were Teddy.
The chicken piece, containing a bit of chicken bone, scratched Teddy's eyeball so badly that after being rushed to the hospital, the doctor on call in the emergency room that day declared young Theodore lucky, in that he hadn't been permanently blinded on his right side by the incident. Our principal was left downtrodden, exiled to the island of despair, where prizes weren't awarded for anything much at all.
