From first grade through about third grade, Tony was my school bully was a skinny little kid, but he ran a gang of kids who were bigger than him. If they caught you they would beat your ass, or they’d hold your arms behind your back and let Tony punch you.

Funny how sometimes Tony and I were on the same side. In 2nd grade, we both hated Susie the class monitor and decided we were gonna get her.

She would tell on you for anything. We were suburban white kids, so we were slow to learn the code of the schoolyard. In 2nd grade, being a tattle tale and getting someone paddled was a pretty common sport.

Sooner or later, most kids learned that nobody wanted to be friends with a rat and in fact, might kick your ass. Being a class monitor and a girl, however, Susie loved telling.

If you talked or got up when Miss Bennett went to the lounge for a smoke, I almost got licks for calling Tony a jackass, which he was, but I got out of that one by crying and claiming I didn’t know what jackass meant.

Most of us didn’t want to behave during Miss Bennett’s smoke breaks, especially us boys. That was our chance to talk, plus Susie was not the boss of us.

One day, Tony and I conspired to teach Susie a lesson. We folded some strips of construction paper into a little accordion shape and told her it was a bomb. Second grade class monitors have great imaginations.

We crawled between the desks all sneaky-like.“We’re gonna put this under teacher’s chair and when she sits down it’s gonna blow up!” Tony said.

“You better not!” said Susie.

We crawled behind Teacher’s desk, put the paper under her chair and snuck back to our seats.

“Don’t sit down!” Susie said when Miss Bennett came in. “Teacher came in and Susie jumped up. “Teacher, teacher! Don’t sit down! There’s a bomb under your chair!”

Second grade teachers don’t have such great imaginations. “Miss Bett said, “What? There’s a wad of paper on the floor. So what? “If you’re going to make up stories, Susie, you can’t be the class monitor.”

Mission accomplished. Nancy, the next class monitor, was a fair civil servant. We got a few shushes, but she wasn’t a narc.