The Miss Whitehead Adventures continued -

One time during my grammar school career the principal Miss Whitehead and I became buddies, sort of  She chose me for some special tasks - or to put it another way she had me do her dirty work.

I do not remember if it was before or after the bat episode that she was my buddy.  If it was after, then it is understandable, she felt guilty for shouting at me.  Or maybe it was a "for old times sake" thing. Afterall, she taught my father and his siblings.

Or if it was before it was understandable she shouted at me - I let her down.

There were two instances I remember.

One was the little house that kept the papers for the on-going paper drive.  She entrusted Van Calloway and I with the keys.  How it came about was she lived in a boarding house on Atlanta Street next door to the apartment building Van lived in.  Across the street was another apartment building that our schoolmate Donna LeVann lived in.  After school until almost dark in the winter months Van and I would hang out on top of a garage behind Donna's apartment house.  Why were we on top of the garage?  Because we figured she could see us better.  We showed off for her. We both had a crush on Donna.  We would do death defying tricks to impress her such as hang from the roof edge and drop or climb up and down a tree beside the little building and generally leap around like idiots showing off.  Donna never mentioned it.  She was probably inside doing her homework and reading.

One time we were on top of the garage doing whatever impressive (we thought) Miss Whitehead walked around the apartment building on the driveway.  She smiled and said, "I thought I would find you boys here."  She told us someone called her at home and told her somebody a couple of men, suspicious looking, were hanging out at the paper drive house.  Would we please go down and see what all that was about and she gave us the keys and told us to look inside the little house and made sure everything was ok.  We saw no strange looking men and the paper drive house looked fine.  Althogh we did go through it looking for some good magazines to read.  We went back to her room at her boarding house, her apartment led off the big front porch, and reported to her that everything was OK.  We reached out to hand her the keys.  She said for us to keep them in case she needed us to check again, which then we felt it was our duty  to check often, this was inside work, like secret police, not like the patrol traffic kids.

We felt complemented but looking back on it, she was probably thinking if the suspicious looking men were dangerous it would be a better world if we got shot or stabbed instead of her.

The 2nd Miss Whitehead caper will follow in a day or so.