Mr. Brown's Ruler.

Mr Brown’s Ruler.

“I did it, sir, I didn’t steal it, sir, I just borrowed it,” she lied. It wasn’t that she was lying about the stealing she was lying about the entire act. Mr. Brown the over officious math teacher; was taken aback, aghast, and speechless for once. He had been absolutely sure that I had stolen his ruler. He had seen me hovering around his desk as he had walked past the class earlier and when he returned his treasured twelve-inch ruler was missing. I was a liar and thief, a child of a broken marriage. One of those kids from that awful new council estate. The estate had been foisted upon an area of good repute and pleasant homes with hard-working homeowners. Now a scar of architecturally ugly cardboard boxes cut a valley through their once green and pleasant land. Mr. Brown had seen his own little slice of England’s green and pleasant land grossly devalued by the mere presence of the brown ugly council estate now despoiling his once unspoilt view out to the Vale of Evesham. This wasn’t the England that Mr Brown had fought a war for. Not the land of victory promised to returning heroes by his personal God, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. In truth, Mr Brown had purposely seen no action. At least no action that had added up to any level of danger beyond that of crossing the parking lot at the Cheltenham communications center. But every Armistice Day he hauled out an extremely tight old uniform replete with ribbons stolen and medals not earned but brought from soldiers down on their luck. Proudly Mr Brown marched shoulder to shoulder replete in lies, theft and forgery; and felt the hometown hero very much.

Now his battles were fought in classrooms with council house kids. They were battles where he held the immoral high ground with superior artillery and a staff room full of reinforcements. In those days, caning a child was still a weapon in a teacher’s arsenal. I had been caned a few times by Mr Brown, as had many of my fellow council house friends, and most of us in error. Our major sin was that we came from council houses, and without exception, the recipients of Mr Browns’ cane were the 50% from the “lower class, no class” council estate. Mr Brown took delight in finding any fault in us and then admonishing us as “lower class no class”. There was no such crime as verbal assault back then. We were supposed to live by the oft-repeated credo “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. If anything, the slurs that left Mr Brown's mouth stung sharper and hurt me more than the cane ever did. 

Our parents, even if singular instilled in us respect, unearned and unwarranted in the people who had power over us. Mostly our parents were single moms, desperate to keep their kids in school and out of trouble; installing the fear of God in us if we were suspended. We all knew that Mr Brown was ephemeral. In an hour he would be gone, and we would move on to suffer a subsequent hour stolen from our lives while another schoolmaster indoctrinate in us a love of Kings, power and subservience to a class system that hated us. We knew Mr Brown's hour of scorn was nothing compared to the broom handle in the hands of a parent who had had a week stolen from them because of a school suspension. A week is 168 hours and 168 times worse would be the punishment meted out to us by angry parents. Regardless, we loved our parents/parent, and we hated the Battalion of Mr Browns that hated us before they met us. Mr Brown seemed to get a guilty pleasure out of our punishment. There was always an element of humiliation in the whole action. Bits of white spittle would form in the corners of his mouth while he admonished you. Mr Brown’s face would grow extra skin forming into ever reddening angrier deeper wrinkles as he belittled you for your unforgivable act and then he described your forthcoming eventual perpetual descent into worthless nothingness. Half the class smiled, and half the class frowned. The smiles and frowns split evenly along class lines. My clumsy observation was that we working-class kids frowned, and the middle-class kids smiled. It’s an outdated misnomer as none of us working-class kids had working family members in the traditional sense of the word working. Yet all the middle-class kids had parents who worked. Some of them saw less of their fathers than we single-parent kids did. When you live in your own paddock, the grass is always greener on the other side from where you stand. Then that realization was still a decade away from my eyes. 

Just a week previously to Mr Brown’s Ruler I had been correctly accused of an abominable act. Guilt was assigned and punishment was proclaimed. As I looked up into Mr Brown’s face, I locked eye contact with him. He hated that, and it just made him angrier. He wanted fear and abject terror, avoidance like a cowering dog hiding from a violently disciplinary master. As I looked at him and the spit bubbles mounted, he raged at my absence of visible fear. He raged, and I obstinately looked at him with a face fixed full of hate and open disgust. What lurked below the surface was a mixture of terror and anger. My crime is lost to my memory, but I do remember that I stood rightly accused. I am not totally innocent in this story. I frequently tormented Mr Brown. Just a month previously, and after my second caning, I had taken the hand brake off in his car and started it rolling towards the sports field. I had a partner in crime who was in Mr Brown’s math class, and he pointed out to Mr Brown that his car was rolling away. The vision of Mr Brown running as if a humanoid version of the Star Wars robot CP3O with his arms spinning frantically like helicopter blades will live in my memory forever. He got to his car as it crashed through the school fence, and it came to a stop nose sunken into an overflow pond. It was the only time that the entire class, regardless of their class, laughed. For once we were united and I remember looking around at joyful faces that had laughed so hard they now stood with arms wrapped around ribs and stomachs and tear-stained faces. Mr Brown’s car after his home was his pride and joy and I did lots of awful things to it over the three years we were adversaries. I earned every caning and repaid them with super glue in door locks, an entire pack of breadcrumbs mixed with glue and pasted onto the vinyl soft top, and I left dead fish in his wheel's hub caps and once even in the boot under his spare wheel. His home didn’t escape either, with frequent ‘knock and runs’ and burning bags of shit on his doorstep. I earned every caning and repaid it threefold. No, I’m not innocent, but I forward the excuse that has probably resulted in every single war since time began- “He started it”.

Now here I was again, being accused of attacking my foe. Mr Brown was already reddening and calling on me to produce his stolen beloved twelve-inch wooden ruler; while he began to inflate himself like a human puffer fish, all the time was becoming excited. I am sure to him punishment was like a sexual act. The foreplay was the oral accusation and berating. The actual act came in those vicious strokes of the cane. I had watched his face as he hit me, and each blow in my mind undoubtedly gave him an ugly pleasure. When he caned me, I saw the glistening sheen of sweat forming on his brow and his eyes changed. Instead of the usual muddy brown puddles, his pupils effervesced a radiant hazel brown. The day of Mr Brown’s Ruler, just when my fate seemed sealed and about to be delivered: JANE.

She stepped in; Jane was in my class, but completely and utterly in every way, Jane was totally out of my class. In my early teen way, I loved her, an unrequited, unsaid and totally undeclared but obvious love. To me she was perfect. In my memory, even today she was everything that a schoolgirl should be in a devious, lustful teenage mind, innocently sexy, coquettishly beautiful. When she moved, it was as if a lyrical soundtrack followed her. I loved everything about her, but here are the top three things. 

Thirdly: She had a laugh that sounded like a whisky waterfall gurgling down a glacial mountain of ice. A laugh that was girlish and a baritone croon all at once. A laugh that only the love child of Archangel Gabriel and Satan should utter. Heaven and hell promised in an infectious, joyful LAUGH. 

Secondly: She had a smile that melted your heart. I’ve worked long hours across my life for hard-won pay. I’ve worked brief hours and earned far too much money. None of that effort or pay was enjoyed as much as a single smile painted across her delicious face. People are revolted when poodles jump up and try to lick the face of their favorite people. Jane’s smiling face made me feel like a poodle.

First and foremost: Her Eyes. Jane’s eyes were beautiful blue orbs with icy green flecks. To me, the eyes are the windows to the soul. If you look deep enough, you can see everything. There in the depths of your eyes, you carry a language that when deciphered describes the real essence of you. Deep inside her eyes lived a hurt that I hadn’t ever seen in even the most unfortunate of friends or foes. Even Mr Browns. Jane hid a hurt that I would never know appreciate or understand. But it was there, like looking down into a black bubbling volcano building to an eruption. I wasn’t there when it blew, but forty years later I saw Jane and she had erupted many times. At 15 I loved her, at 55 I wanted to hold her and tell her it was going to be alright. I didn’t, and it is to my eternal shame. 

There, aged 15, I watched her stepping in front of the bullets destined for me. “I did it, sir, I didn’t steal it, I just borrowed it,” she said. Jane was from the pleasant side of the road and as such could do no wrong in the eyes of Mr Brown and his cohorts. Jane gave Mr Brown back his ruler, and he thanked her, and then he dismissively dismissed me with the wave of a hand. Like you would do to motion a dog to a corner of the room. For a second, I considered asking for an apology but thought better of it. I would bank this moment and use it to stare at a fractionally guilt strewn Mr Brown. Over the rest of the hour of Math, I stared at Mr Brown and every split-second that our eyes met, it was as if I was slapping him. I swear occasionally he would jerk back just a little as if stung by a faint electric shock or a paper wasp. All too soon for me, and for the one and only time, in Mr Browns’ math class, the bell sounded for the end of the lesson. I picked up my bag and ambled out, walking the steps of the victorious soldier. Every inch of the distance I stared at Mr Brown, and in the last step, I caught Mr Brown’s eye for one last glorious zapping moment. Outside the class, I jogged down the corridor after Jane. I had never ever spoken to Jane before and for a moment I considered running straight past her. But I slowed to a walking pace and nervously tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, laughed, smiled, and looked straight at me. I thanked her for what she had done and mumbled gratitude, avoiding her gaze. She told me that it was ok, and it was just a ruler. I smiled and reached into my bag and gave her the real Mr Brown’s Ruler.