Not Another Detention!

by Donna Poole

They were yellow half-sheets of paper, and our kids got them frequently. We thought all kids did until we recently heard about a man who got one detention the entire time he attended the school.

What? Did he only go to school there for one day?

That’s about how long it took our kids to get detentions, one day.

We carpooled with another family who had a boy and three girls. One day their son got into the car with tears streaming down his little face. I thought something terrible must have happened to him at school.

“What’s wrong, James?”

He didn’t say a word, but he reached into the small pocket of his little shirt and pulled out a paper folded perfectly to the size of a postage stamp. Solemnly he unfolded it, inch by inch to its full yellow length and held it out to me.

“Oh, James, you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just a detention! Our kids get them all the time.”

That’s when one of his sisters spoke up. “You don’t know our dad!”

Then I was the one who fell silent, until we let the other family’s kids out of the car. Then my husband John and I had a long discussion about what kind of dad the poor kid must have! We met him later, and a kinder man you could never hope to know. He became one of our best friends. We still laugh about, “You don’t know our dad!”

Our kids seldom got into trouble at home for detentions they got at school; we figured having to stay was punishment enough along with incurring the wrath of siblings who didn’t have a detention but had to also wait at school for a ride home.

If you could have seen our children with their sweet angelic faces you may have wondered how they could get detentions, but I assure you, they managed. I remember detentions that made us laugh. When Angie was in kindergarten, a little boy named Chip threw a spit wad at her whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. Angie thought this was disgusting, and it made her furious. She devised a reasonable revenge. She waited until she had a whole handful of spit wads, stood up, and threw them all back at Chip, when the teacher was looking. Detention.

When Danny was a little boy, he came home with his infraction written under “other” on his detention slip. It said, “Standing on his chair.” I asked why he stood on his chair during class.

“Mommy, that school has 101 rules, and standing on your chair isn’t one of them! I stood on my chair because I couldn’t see.”

Made sense to me!

One year, perhaps second grade, Danny did accumulate an unusual number of detentions even for a Poole kid. He was supposed to go to a friend’s house on Friday, and we told him he could only go if he didn’t get detention that week. When his teacher laid a yellow slip on his desk, Danny, usually the happiest kid in the class, got tears in his eyes. When his teacher found out that detention was going to keep him from spending time with his friend, she was more upset than he was.

After a few minutes she came back, picked up the yellow paper, ripped it up, and threw it in the garbage, and said, “Let’s just pretend this never happened, shall we?”

The detention I remember best about Johnnie happened when he was in high school. The school required the older boys to wear suit coats. He went into the men’s room and returned to the learning center with his coat on backward and fully buttoned down the back. Of course, the other kids laughed. The note on his detention read, “Funny but also very distracting.”

I don’t remember their more mundane detentions; perhaps they do. And perhaps I better hope they don’t read this! I do recall one detention the three of them got together. I thought it was unfair but also a good life lesson. To understand, I suppose you’d have to live in Michigan. There’s a huge football rivalry here, not only between the University of Michigan and Ohio State, but also between the University of Michigan and Michigan State. The school’s band leader, who shall not be named because he’s a friend, was not having a good day. He was a graduate of Michigan State and a hater of U of M football. He’d told the band to never play U of M’s fight song. During band practice he was called out of the room and someone suggested playing the forbidden fight song when he returned.

The kids didn’t pick a good day. The band leader’s face got as red as Santa’s suit, and he demanded the culprits who’d played the fight song fess up. Not everyone confessed, but our kids were in the group who admitted the infraction, and they got detention. And they thought it was unfair.

Did the band director overreact? Perhaps. But I told our kids there would be times in life when someone in authority might give them an order they didn’t agree with, and their opinion wouldn’t matter. Actions have consequences.

Our fourth child, Kimmee didn’t get detentions, but she did have to stand in the middle of the floor. She arrived when we were older. We homeschooled her, not because we didn’t like the school, but because she could read her brother’s college textbook when she was four years old. We feared she’d be bored in kindergarten. Our plan was to homeschool her a few years, but the few years lasted until she graduated.

Kimmee was familiar with detentions, so when she started homeschooling, she was puzzled. What would happen if she misbehaved? Would she have to stay after home?

No one likes detentions!

We associate the word detention with punishment or with being a prisoner, but the word means only “the action of detaining someone.” Sometimes, whether we know it or not, we’re detained for our own good. A delay that frustrates us may keep us from being involved in a fatal accident. A prayer that seems unanswered might still be; God could be saying, “Wait awhile, my child.”

We may long for freedom from an illness or a difficult circumstance, but change doesn’t come. We feel trapped, detained. We pray; the heavens seem silent, but they never are. Perhaps God is saying, “I will fix this, my child, but not here. Eternity will show you that your tears made your rainbows.”

After a detention made an already long school day longer, our kids seemed extra happy to climb into the car and head home. When my school days feel endless, I sometimes think of a few lines of an old hymn I love, “Some Golden Daybreak.”

“Some glorious morning sorrow will cease, /Some glorious morning all will be peace. /Heartaches all ended, school days all done, /Heaven will open—Jesus will come.” –Carl Blackmore 1934

These school days with their occasional detentions won’t last forever, my friend! But until we’re done with them, let’s keep trusting God and walking each other Home!  

The end

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These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Four: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

I have six other books on Amazon as well, four fiction books in the “Life at the Corners” series, and two children’s Christmas picture books.

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