The Truth Be Told

     I think telling the truth is all important, and I'm not going to lie. There was a time when I didn't much feel like doing so.  In the high school where I was teaching, it was the the practice for the principal, John, to send a single copy of  his announcements or messages to each department as a whole. The names of the English teachers appeared in alphabetical order at the top of the missive, and as each teacher read and adhered to whatever the message was, that teacher would cross out their name, and put the message in the next teacher's mailbox. Simple, you might say, and it would or should have been except I taught English to about 100+ high school students. We were obligated then to have them write at least 2 compositions per week, with one being  a substantial 200+ word assignment. So my desk and the inbox atop of it were always laden with papers.

   In the mornings I would check my mailbox in the office, peruse the messages and place the papers in the inbox on my desk. Most of the time, the messages did not seem very important to us, but I would read, cross out my name and then bring it to the office to deposit it in the next person's mailbox. My name started with Mad., and the person ahead of me had a name beginning with Mac. Smooth as glass, if you follow all the steps.

   One day, Jane Mac... was in distress. Principal John had been in conversation with someone down the line in the alphabet. That teacher was unable to relate to a particular missive because  she had not received it, she said. John was certain that Jane had not passed the missive on down the line. She was sure she had. She had no idea at what point the letter chain had stalled. 

     I was pretty sure that the buck had stopped with me. It probably got lost and discarded along with my mass of paperwork. I had always dreaded the thought of being sent to the principal's office, but I figured it was the decent thing to do. So I steeled myself, visited the office and told the principal that the Mac transmission had reached my Mad, desk. I said I had read it and then threw it away with my stack of corrected and returned papers.

    Although I must say my reputation for due diligence was known, I was still surprised to find he didn't believe me. Instead of accepting my excuse, he said he admired my loyalty to a fellow teacher. I insisted it was my failure, but he still thought I was protecting Jane.  I long for those days now.

  ***As a postscript, not long after that, Principal John and Jane started dating, so I'm not sure how that came about. The relationship didn't last. Jane eventually returned to her home state of Tennessee and John retired and entered the priesthood.  Honest.