Absentminded

There was a system in place in my elementary school designed to reward and punish behavior among the younger kids. It seemed so well established to all of us that we never really questioned it; in fact I don't recall that it was ever made fodder for jokes, even after we had all developed our sense of irony. It was simple: gold slips for good behavior, pink for bad. Get enough pink slips and you were officially in trouble. Gold slips could be exchanged on Fridays in between classes for the kind of stuff you'd get for losing at the state fair or for putting a quarter in a red metal vending machine. There wasn't much variety in either the prizes or the kids who would show up in line every week. These were the kids who would grinningly wait for Down Syndrome Robin's wandering playground path to coincide with the Absentminded Recess Monitor's strict rectangle, knowing all the while that a gold ticket was certain to be generated. The ticket system was entirely based on the faculty and staff's subjective judgments of our behavior, and all of them were wise to this scam except for the Absentminded one, who either didn't care or didn't remember, and so would generate dozens more gold tickets than the rest. Down Syndrome Robin was a perfect mark because he was always tipping over in the sand or getting upset. Some of these kids, having figured out how this worked, did it for years, seemingly unable to get bored of the pencils, erasers, and pencil accessories that were available each Friday. There was nothing good that you had to save up for.

Pink slips didn't add up to much either. I suspect that they were more of a red herring than anything else. Maybe they were just there so that the faculty could adopt the blameless manner of the parking officer instead of constantly being forced into the role of ombudsman. Most of us avoided them at all cost anyway- there was something about being jotted down by name along side a date and a phrase like "stuck gum on wall" that seemed dangerous. I wasn't much for obvious disciplinary problems at this age, so I never found out what happened. Anyway, all it took to keep me within the guidelines of acceptable behavior was the shadow of parental involvement, and I assumed that the pink slips would eventually coincide with my parents. I only ever got them for one reason, until the powers that were took away super bouncy balls as a gold slip prize. I suspect this managerial decision was to correct the only behavior problem on my otherwise sterling record. They were just so damn bouncy. It was impossible to resist winging them down the halls or at the corners of the classroom. The little spheres of dense rubber were why I started sitting in the back corners of class, too: whenever the teacher turned their back or was at an angle where the activity was undetectable, I'd have a couple of clandestine bounces. Eventually, though, I'd feel the pressure build and I'd have to let loose, cracking my hand like a whip to give the ball a wild and unpredictable spin. Even though this action was tantamount to getting myself in trouble and handing my toy over to the teacher forever, I couldn't resist the couple precious seconds of pandemonium offered by the ball. Soon each teacher's contraband drawer was littered with them, and no one would give me gold slips except for the Absentminded Recess Monitor.

My friend Travis and I came up with a lazy little scheme that we would play out twice a week for her to keep us supplied with free bouncy balls. It involved a swan dive off of the playground balance beam, a painful landing, and an extremely helpful passerby. We'd trade off roles, and actually, we had a lot of fun with it, experimenting with different and always more impressive prat falls off of a variety of playground equipment. We were good; it was a sure thing.
The week that I went in as usual to trade in my gold slips for bouncy balls and bouncy balls had inexplicably disappeared from the table of prizes must have been tragic in some small way. I don't remember. It was a small school; there must have been something else dominating my limited attentions that week. Nevertheless, they were gone, and so was my discipline problem. I don't know how long the pink and gold slip system lasted either; it was only for the first, second, and third graders. I can imagine some parents in our relatively liberal district thinking the system a bit too overt an example of conditioning.

Fourth graders were not rewarded, unless you count non-punishment as a reward. An even simpler system was put in place, which we called the Wall. Acting up would earn you a recess-long sentence with your back to it. Acting up again would turn you one hundred eighty degrees. This punishment had no risk of parental involvement, but it was boring. Again, Absentminded was a great help. She'd forget where on the wall she had sentenced you to stand. This prompted wary wind sprints along the wall whenever she turned her back. Eventually this turned into a more violent mode of racing with whoever was in the lead occasionally diving to the sand to trip any close followers and send them flying. With the brick wall inches to one's left, and the constant risk of Absentminded turning her attention back to her detainees, the game was dangerous and fun when played properly. Travis and I played it all that year before his parents' divorce moved him to a different school district and we both survived the activity with only minor scratches.

One of the times I became a little less boy and a little more man was when I was told by a friend of my father's that Absentminded Recess Lady had been in a motorcycle accident when she was younger and it had damaged her brain in some subtle way. The accident had killed her husband and it was generally looked upon as a piece of good samaritanship that she had been given the job at the school. It took me a moment to process this, but then I had to laugh like hell, because I knew about all the fun that she was worth, and how we all ricochet around at angles so weird they seem random.