Head Tale

As these things sometimes do, the plan spiraled…instead of going downtown, shouldn't he do a trip into Regina where he could definitely get better prizes?  And if he was doing a run into the city, shouldn't he not waste the trip on just getting prizes for the dance but maybe take along a friend or two and do a few other things as well – hit the mall, do some shopping, grab a burger, etc? 

Next thing you know, I'm sitting in a car with five other guys who've all decided that classes aren't quite a huge priority that day when compared to the prospect of a Big Mac and a chance to check out the latest tunes at A&A Music.   My big purchase of the day was indeed a cassette version of “Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em” and when we got back to town (right around 3:30pm conveniently), we set-up in the front yard of one of our co-conspirators who happened to live half a block from school, listening to my new purchase on repeat (well, the one song anyhow – the rest of the album was crap.)   

A few classmates happened to walk home this way and after the third person passed along a variation of “Where'd you guys go today?  Mr. C. (the vice-principal) was massively pissed you weren't in class today!”, we realised that perhaps taking six guys out of a classroom of 20 students might be a bit more noticeable than we'd originally thought (okay, there was no thought of that type at all come to think of it.) 

So to pre-empt the next day's lecture, one of our group was drafted to call the school and arrange to meet with the Vice-Principal in his office that evening.  I won't go into the details of what transpired in that meeting but none of us were suspended (or even really got in trouble) after pleading our case that we were all some of the top students in the school, that missing a single day of classes to blow off steam wasn't going to hurt us and that we wouldn't do it again (we didn't do that type of mass-road trip again.  Other activities that were even worse though – oh yes! )   

Part of the reason I think we didn't get into trouble was during the course of our conversation, the vice-principal made one comment in passsing that was so out-of-line that all of us were a bit shocked that we even heard it.  I'm not sure if he realised he'd crossed a line when he said it but again, none of us got suspended or had any other discipline leveled against us for what was, in retrospect, a pretty brazen offence. 

Or it could've just been the magical spell of MC Hammer protecting us.  “Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em” indeed!