Time Warp Tuesday --- False Alarm

Back when I was in second grade, I went to Highland Street Elementary. When we arrived at school, we would stand around (inside or outside depending on the weather) until the morning bell went off. One morning, I was standing in the lobby of the school with my friend Aaron and one of the kids from our neighborhood, Patrick, who was in Kindergarten.

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As we were standing there, Patrick noticed the red fire alarm and asked what is was. We told him it was a movie projector and if you pulled down the handle it would show a cartoon. He said, "Why does it say F-I-R-E on it?" to which we explained that the cartoon would be about fires.

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So the bell rings and Aaron and I head off to class. We got about half-way there and the fire alarm starts going off (we knew it had to be Patrick!). Several fire trucks, police, ambulances, etc came rushing to the school. We figured we were safe as long as we just kept our mouth shut, but Patrick had other ideas. When the alarm started going off, he headed off screaming in an all-out sprint for home (which was about 2 miles...not a good idea for a 6-year-old to go alone).

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It wasn't long before Patrick was caught (and spilled the beans) and each class at the school had to stand in a "police line-up" so Patrick could identify the story tellers. We held out hope that he would forget who we were, but as soon as he got to us, it was, "Oh yeah, that's them!". They put us in this little room by ourselves for about an hour, and when we went down to the office, all our parents were there, police officers, administrators....pretty scary for a 2nd grader.

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Thankfully we lived in a time where these pranks weren't quite as serious as they are today! If this happened today I am sure we would have been shipped to some alternative school and received some type of label that would follow us around for life. Since it was the "Good old days" the wooden paddle was enough!