Chapter 7 — Why Did You Do It?
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lumni Day at Kennebec Academy. Here come the old-timers, white-headed, gray-headed, some too fat, some dried up and skinny, looking odd in the baseball caps passed out at registration. Some younger ones towing sons and daughters. Some still in college looking self-conscious. Friendly people shaking hands, dimly remembering each other, straining to read the name on the sticky label. Lunch with the school in the dining hall. Extra tables set up in the adjacent common room. Clashing of knives and forks, rattle of plates, talking, talking, talking. “What was it like when you were here?” “Do they still celebrate old Captain Kenniston’s birthday?” “In my time we used to …” The Headmaster taps on his water glass. Conversation dribbles into silence. “Coffee will be served in the faculty room. When you have finished your coffee, we will gather briefly in the Assembly Hall before the soccer and football games.” In the Assembly Hall, much shuffling of feet, people climbing over people’s knees, squashing over to make room on the worn benches. The Headmaster stands. “Students, former students, friends, It is a pleasure indeed … This afternoon I am not going to tell any jokes. I am not going to ask you for money – although money is always needed and always welcome. An almost-alumnus has asked me for an opportunity to speak to you today. He has a debt to pay the schoo1 and he has come back today to pay it. It is a privilege to introduce Mr. George B. Midlander, Director of the Meteorological Research Laboratory at the Great University and well-known to our basketball team as the coach from the Youth Detention Center whose team spoiled our undefeated season last March. Mr. Midlander.” “Gentlemen – and I include Headmaster, faculty, students, and former students. Anyone else is welcome to eavesdrop. I stand before you today to answer a question that I could not answer twenty years ago. I was a senior then. We were taking the final geometry examination in the gym. You know the scene. Rows of tablet armchairs, rows of shirt-sleeved boys, heads bent, pens and pencils slanted, busy. Proctors pacing up and down the rows, patiently, watchfully patrolling. Hand up. “Sir, may I sharpen my pencil?” Whispered permission. Restless feet. Smell of new-cut June grass through the open windows. The slow march of the clock. At last, one boy stands, gathers coat, bluebook, pencils, walks to the front table, drops the bluebook, smiles, “Not too bad.” Another and then another. I finished, got up to go out, laid my bluebook on the pile. The proctor noticed that I had forgotten to write my teacher’s name on the cover of the book. I whipped my pen out of my shirt pocket and with it came a card with a number of significant geometry formulae on it. It fell, face up on the desk. That did it. I was fired. In the course of that painful process, the then Headmaster, Dr. Jennings, asked me a question I could not answer. I sat on a hard chair in his office unable to say a word. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you do it?” He really wanted to know; and I could only mumble miserably. “I don’t know.” 32
