The Day I Ran Away

My fourth grade teacher was Mr. Syer.

Mr. Syer was in his late twen­ties or thir­ties (to a kid he was just old) about 5 foot 3, with thick black framed glass­es, a Bea­t­le hair cut and he always wore long socks, shorts, a checked shirt and a tie. I didn’t like him. In fact I hat­ed him. He was my first exam­ple of a male teacher in my life and unfor­tu­nate­ly he left scars that remain to this day.

Mr. Syer was a cru­el nasty lit­tle man that got his kicks out of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment upon his stu­dents and unlike many of the teach­ers of the 70′s, he didn’t restrict his phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment to the boys. He wasn’t one for dis­crim­i­na­tion, he hit all of us.

Look­ing back now I can see Mr. Syer had Hitler fan­tasies. All that was miss­ing was a bot­tle of black hair dye and a cheap fake Hitler “stouche” glued to his top lip and he would have been his hero all pack­aged up and sent down through time to haunt ME.

Of a day when­ev­er a bell rang for break time, he would stand at the door­way with a mon­ster wood­en ruler and his arm would shoot out ran­dom­ly to slap us kids hard on the back of the legs as we exit­ed the room. Of course me being me, the kid that didn’t fit and didn’t “get it” I was always the tar­get of his pun­ish­ment.

At first.

As with any­one I had an issue with, even at such an ear­ly age I would retal­i­ate, my behav­iour would get worse, I would refuse to do what I was told. So most of my time would end up being spent sit­ting at a lit­tle desk out­side the head­mas­ters office or I would be sent to the library for pun­ish­ment. That one would have worked on any oth­er kid except me. I devoured books faster than a starv­ing child devours food. So in the end, I would act up just to be sent to the library.

I guess this pun­ish­ment suit­ed both Mr. Syer and I. He didn’t have to put up with me in class and I got to read what­ev­er books I liked all day, so we had this type of unspo­ken truce. My friends and class­mates weren’t so lucky, with­out me as his tar­get he soon turned his fas­cist atten­tion else­where. He soon began to slap around the qui­et girls, the shy ones, the ones that wouldn’t fight back like me.

I would walk out of class of a day with­out a mark on me, with­out need­ing to feel the fear of the “line­up”. It always seemed to me like run­ning the gaunt­let and I would watch the fear in the oth­er kid’s eyes as they slunk out of class, try­ing to avoid eye con­tact with him in case they raised his atten­tion and his long ruled arm slap­ping away hard at the back of their legs as they passed him in the door­way. I would see the oth­er kids limp­ing with tears in their eyes and it hurt me inside just about as much as it hurt them.

As time went on Mr. Syer’s fury at us kids seemed to grow and his vio­lence got worse. I would sit with Sue at lunchtime and we would count the bruised ruler marks on her legs and back. Then some­thing began hap­pen­ing that ter­ri­fied me. Mr. Syer start­ed throw­ing his chalk­board duster at the kids when he thought they weren’t pay­ing atten­tion. My class­mates were walk­ing around with bumps and lumps on their heads and in con­stant fear mode. We all dread­ed going to class of a day, who would be his next tar­get? It could be any­one.

I soon learned to act up about 9.05 am, about five min­utes after class con­vened but there were times that I just couldn’t be both­ered, and that was how I wit­nessed the most hor­rid event of my young years.

I can’t remem­ber which kid it was that he hurt so bad­ly but one day he spun around from the board and just pegged his duster at the class, it cracked one of the chil­dren on the head, caus­ing them to fall to the floor and near­ly pass out with a huge mas­sive lump on their fore­head and con­cus­sion.

I don’t remem­ber whether there was uproar from the par­ents but there was uproar from me. Some parts of me have always been there and a deep aware­ness is one of them. I was aware this was wrong, I was aware of what this was doing to my class­mates. I was aware of some­thing new in their eyes that shouldn’t be there. I was aware of their fear and I was aware of them sink­ing slow­ly and silent­ly into a shell to hide from what was being inflict­ed dai­ly upon them.

I com­plained to my par­ents and was rather shocked at the response.

 ”He is your teacher, you do as you are told”.

I went and climbed the Figtree in the back­yard to pon­der that one. I still didn’t get the idea of hav­ing to respect some­one that hadn’t earned it. I still don’t. I didn’t under­stand the idea of adults being right just because they were adults. I believed in truth even back then. Any­thing less just didn’t cut it. I guess that is why I could nev­er nego­ti­ate the under­cur­rents of eti­quette. I couldn’t under­stand fake smiles that didn’t reach the eyes. I couldn’t under­stand why some­one was say­ing one thing and their body lan­guage was say­ing some­thing else.

I was so fine­ly tuned into nature around me at that young age that I could sense so much unsaid. Why are you smil­ing and say­ing you would love to come to morn­ing tea, when your body lan­guage is scream­ing “get me away from this per­son”?

Of a morn­ing I would catch the school bus to school, as mum nev­er knew what time dad would start work but of an after­noon she would always pick me up from school along with the oth­er moth­ers. This was a source of end­less enter­tain­ment for me in my intro­spec­tive way and it gave me a chance to observe human rit­u­als and behav­iours at close range. It tru­ly amazed me. Mum had a group of friends who all had kids in my class. We pret­ty much stayed the same class of kids all the way through our pri­ma­ry years so the par­ents end­ed up doing the hol­i­days togeth­er and the week­end BBQ’s trip.

What had me puz­zled was that inside a class­room, out of sight of these par­ents, a mad man was vent­ing his frus­tra­tion about life on these peo­ples kids and all they were wor­ried about was the colour of the wool they were using to knit items for the upcom­ing school fete. The kids would slink silent­ly up to the par­ents after school with sad look on their faces, nurs­ing limps from being nev­er-end­ing­ly slapped about and all jumpy and scared after con­stant­ly being on the alert for fly­ing dusters aimed at their heads. It was ignored, every­one pre­tend­ed it didn’t exist. The par­ents would glance at the red marks and bruis­es, I saw them look, I would watch their eyes and then they would gri­mace and turn away and change the sub­ject. This was a teacher, this was then and this was ignored.

So I decid­ed to go one step fur­ther. One day at lunchtime not to long after the duster inci­dent and injury I was sit­ting talk­ing to the oth­er kids and the sub­ject of Mr Syer came up as usu­al. I think it was uni­ver­sal, no one liked him. Me, being me told the girls of my big bold plan. I was going to run away from school.

I had it all planned, I would catch the bus to school with extra food in my lunch­box and then I would not go in the gates, I would keep going. Of course fine details like “where” I was going didn’t cross my mind. I was going and that was that. One of the oth­er girls stat­ed that she had once heard (they were teen girls in train­ing after all, good goss is good goss) that if more than one per­son runs away from a teacher, that teacher then get fired. We all thought we were so smart on that one and anoth­er girl Pauline and a few oth­ers vol­un­teered to accom­pa­ny me on the “Great Escape”.

We whis­pered togeth­er for the rest of the lunchtime and by the end of the lunchtime it was look­ing like Mr. Syer was going to be girl-less very soon.

The next day dawned a tad over­cast and driz­zly but that did not deter me. I snuck into the kitchen and found the match tin and poured a whole heap of match­box­es into my bag and I hunt­ed around until I found some pack­ets of tic tacs and threw them in with my lunch, picked up my rain­coat and I was set. I don’t remem­ber feel­ing excit­ed or over adven­tur­ous, it was just some­thing that had to be done to get rid of our teacher.

Off I set to the bus-stop. I was rather sur­prised to see one of my class mates miss­ing when I got there and was fur­ther sur­prised when I jumped on the bus and found two more miss­ing. I guessed by that stage that they had chick­ened out and tak­en the easy route and begged sick for the day. But Pauline jumped on at her stop and we sat togeth­er plan­ning what we would do.

The bus trun­dled along it’s mer­ry way towards school with many of the oth­ers look­ing at us with strange looks on their faces. Will they do it or won’t they? They didn’t know me to well if they thought I was going to chick­en out. We arrived at the bus-stop and all climbed off and with­out a sec­ond glance back Pauline and I turned right instead of left and we set off down the side street. Off on an adven­ture to free­dom.

Look­ing back it’s fun­ny how my mind worked even then, to escape detec­tion we stuck to the side streets and crossed the back­street path­ways, head­ed to the big dip­per of Rob­sons Rd ( a street of up and down hills) and then ulti­mate­ly to the base of the moun­tain.

By that time of my life I knew the entire area like the back of my hand. I spent my days explor­ing my envi­ron­ment so I was famil­iar with all the laneways and short­cuts that made our trip even quick­er. All I knew was that I was head­ed for the moun­tain, what I would do next after we had arrived there hadn’t crossed my mind or even been thought off in any way shape or form.

Pauline whined a bit on the way, I don’t think she was as used to trav­el­ing as I was but in her defense, the hills were pret­ty tir­ing for an eight year old. Up hill, down hill, get to the bot­tom, cross the road and start climb­ing up hill again. It seemed nev­er end­ing but even­tu­al­ly civ­i­liza­tion petered out and we were sur­round­ed by the foothill man­sions that dot­ted the escarp­ment along the coast. We cut through a track behind one of my uncles hous­es and kept climb­ing up the moun­tain, the scrub get­ting thick­er and green­er every step we took. I was in my ele­ment now and I relaxed as the sounds of nature poured into my head. The birds singing around me in the trees drowned out the cars on the free­way which was now a faint rib­bon stretch­ing along far below us. I felt alive again.

We found a creek and I once again mar­veled at the dif­fer­ences between oth­ers and myself as I taught Pauline how to cross it with­out get­ting wet and where and how to get a drink from the run­ning flow and not drink from the stag­nant ponds.

We were hun­gry at this point and we devoured our lunch. It soon start­ed rain­ing so I climbed fur­ther in the scrub and found us a shel­tered spot from the rain. I got my match­es out and start­ed a tiny fire and that is when I came up with what I thought was my best inven­tion to date.

Roast­ed tic tacs.

 

Yum.

 

By this time Pauline was start­ing to get scared and feel­ing rather guilty about the whole adven­ture. Mind you I don’t think I helped much when instead of telling her it would be ok when she was dis­cussing the most like­ly pun­ish­ment her par­ents would meter out to her that night, I told her instead that they would prob­a­bly ground her for life and she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.

I just thought of mum break­ing more wood­en spoons on my butt and I envi­sioned pil­ing on and burn­ing all of mum’s wood­en spoons on my lit­tle fire as I pon­dered what pun­ish­ment I would war­rant for this huge one.

I fig­ured by this time that it was get­ting on to ear­ly after­noon so we decid­ed to set off back down the moun­tain. The weath­er cleared and the sun shone warm­ly on our faces, dry­ing our thin uni­forms out and our wet socks. By now I had long tossed the cum­ber­some rain­coat off me and it was sit­ting back in our lit­tle shel­ter where it had pro­tect­ed us from the rain.

Every now and then there was a break in the trees and the whole coastal plain would come into view stretched out before us as far as our eyes could see. There were many big coal tankers anchored out to sea near the five islands, all wait­ing to be cleared to come into port to unload coal or to pick up steel and be off again on their jour­neys to Chi­na and South Amer­i­ca and oth­er such exot­ic places. I always wished I could stow­away on those ships.

Way down below was the sprawl of devel­op­ment creep­ing fur­ther and fur­ther up the moun­tain towards us, reclaim­ing more and more of the green and replac­ing it with con­crete and tiles, a mat pat­tern of dull red roofs and var­i­ous shades of grey. In the far dis­tance, the steel­works belched it’s thick grey clouds of pol­lut­ed smoke over the city and the air was thick with smog.

I shud­dered but kept climb­ing down any­way. I want­ed to get home for the after­noon car­toons and I was hun­gry again. We soon reached the roads again and by this time Pauline was tuck­ered out. Her sis­ter worked in a phar­ma­cy near where we appeared from our bush hide­away so we made our way there, after decid­ing it might just be the best way to intro­duce our­selves back into soci­ety again with min­i­mum yelling in our direc­tion.

I was still full of the day’s adven­tures, I hadn’t quite come back to Earth and I had left a part of my head back with that nev­er to be for­got­ten yel­low plas­tic rain­coat up the moun­tain. My shoul­ders slumped again and we made our way in to Pauline’s sis­ter to face the wrath.

Pauline’s sis­ter knew we were miss­ing, appar­ent­ly things had got­ten rather fre­net­ic in our absence, the police had been called, every­one had been out look­ing all day from 9am onwards when our class­mates, who didn’t real­ly believe we were going to do it, went and told all the teach­ers of our plans. The teach­ers prompt­ly con­tact­ed our par­ents and a search squad soon set out. Which we had been com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to until that point.

Her sis­ter drove us back to the school, it was end of day and the oth­er kids had left but the police and all the teach­ers were there wait­ing for our return.

I had been informed by Pauline’s sis­ter that Mr. Syer was run­ning around like a head­less chook hav­ing a ner­vous break­down and that was enough for me to have a lit­tle smile on my face as I got out of the vehi­cle. Serves him right the ass­hole.

I was crushed by mum, who was beside her­self and I just looked at her and told her I was fine. I sort of pushed her away from me and stomped up to where Mr. Syer was pac­ing up and down the foot­path.

I looked at him with my hands on my hips and legs apart. He asked me where I had been and why had I run away and scared every­one. I peered back at him and said “What are you still doing here, Haven’t you been sacked yet. Don’t hit a kid again.”

With that I turned and tossed my stub­born lit­tle head and went and climbed into mum’s valiant, star­ing straight ahead with my arms crossed.

When we got home the lec­tures start­ed. “Didn’t you real­ize the dan­ger”, “What if you had been snatched”, “What if some­thing had hap­pened to you”. I endured the expe­ri­ence of being sat on dad’s friend Mr. ex Police Officer’s knee, while he lec­tured me on what could hap­pen to chil­dren.

I just looked at him, I couldn’t under­stand what he meant.

“If some­one grabbed me, well let them try” I thought.

What dan­ger? I knew where I was going, I knew what I was doing and besides couldn’t he see that I had a rea­son. I shrugged and switched off, par­ents would nev­er get it.

What I guess I couldn’t under­stand most was the con­tra­dic­tion. On week­ends I was allowed to wan­der and explore where I want­ed. I knew to avoid dan­ger. If I walked along the road I would walk on the side with the traf­fic com­ing towards me, so no one could sneak up behind me. I was acute­ly aware of Myspace and nev­er allowed some­one to come with­in my cir­cle unless I allowed it.

I knew where I was and where I was going. I knew just how far and how fast that object was com­ing towards me. I knew just where that invis­i­ble bird was, singing from the tree­tops. I was just aware. I knew how to clear under­growth and how to make a break around my fire. I knew to put it out by cov­er­ing it with earth and wait­ing until I was sure it was total­ly out. I had been taught that already on my many out­back trips. I knew how to get water and to find food, although my roast­ed tic tacs rocked and I still say that to this day.

So I couldn’t under­stand why my protest and “great escape” went down with the adults like a ton of bricks. Why was a school day dif­fer­ent? Why was I being trod­den on for some­thing I believed I was right in doing and that I did every oth­er day any­way.

 *Sigh* Always the why, with my in the thick of it ask­ing.

Per­haps the desired affect was achieved; it sure lit a fire up Mr. Syer’s butt. I don’t remem­ber him hit­ting any­one after that for the rest of the year. He wasn’t sacked though, I don’t even know whether he was ever spo­ken to about it, I’d say it was just put down to me being so naughty again.

I don’t know how the kids fol­low­ing our year into fourth grade faired with the ruler either, I can only hope the les­son he learned was big enough nev­er to hit a child again but sad­ly I think it was his nature. A cru­el lit­tle man..

Of course the par­ents all made the kids stay away from me all the more after that one and I was even more “Nigel no friends” than before. Always the weird out­cast, which I couldn’t under­stand.

I knew why I had done it and now you do.