As I was walking down the long hall leading to the side door today, I saw some students bouncing super-balls against the walls and floor, while they were waiting for their next class. It reminded me of something that happened years ago. Wes, you’ll remember this one.

We’d been having problems in the hallways of the old junior high. Besides the usual problems, that is.

The boys were bringing superballs to school. They were firing them against the floors and walls so hard, it was like dodging bullets to try and walk down the hall. Talk about a gauntlet: when one of those things hit you, you felt it. It hurt.

The principal couldn’t see through the flak to find a culprit. It seemed as though every boy in the building was standing around the halls laughing at the bouncing superballs.

Surely you can all see where this is going by now.

Cut to the library; my class is in there and you could hear a pin drop. The loudspeaker begins to throw out static, so we know that an announcement of some kind is coming. It came.

“Ahem. Ahem. It has come to my attention that the boys are taking out their balls in the hallways and hitting the girls with them. Now, boys, surely you all know, at your age, that taking your balls out in public and annoying the girls with them is just not school-appropriate behavior. If this doesn’t stop, something could happen which would affect your lives forever. Therefore, I’m asking all the teachers to be on the lookout for boys’ balls in the hallways, and whenever you see them, you have my permission to take them. Any boy with confiscated balls will need his parent’s permission to have them returned. That is all.”

It was enough. For about thirty seconds there was dead silence. And then the entire building erupted in a fit of laughter unlike anything I’d ever seen before. To this day, I doubt that principal has any idea what he really announced to us all.

But it was a great ending to what had been a really boring day.

I don’t think I could ever walk up to a guy and say, “I see your balls; now you must give them to me.” However, I used to tell my students, “Put it away. If I have to ask you to give that to me, it might embarass us both.”

I didn’t want them for keeps. But sometimes I borrowed them. I always gave them back, though.

Some things are supposed to be merely borrowed.