The Baseball Card Caper

In 1973, I was a proud member of the Eldorado Elementary School Chorus in Spring Valley, New York. Ok, I don’t remember if I was a proud member. Looking back I wonder how I even was in the school chorus. I’m sure they made me do it since I was pretty shy back then and singing wasn’t my bag. Unlike now when I can belt out a tune with the best of them. Sure.

Anyway, I was in Mrs. Mayhew’s 5th grade class and she was the meanest teacher in the school. Time has not softened my view on Mrs. Mayhew. She was intimidating and I truly she believe hated kids. Especially me.  These days teachers have to search students for guns, knives, and drugs. Back then Mrs. Mayhew was on a crusade to eliminate baseball cards from Eldorado Elementary school. That’s right, baseball cards. To her, they were the worst things in the world and she would confiscate them at every opportunity.

On many occasions, she would go into my coat pocket and take away my baseball cards. That’s right, she stole them from my coat pocket! She would rummage through the other kids pockets as well and she would steal our precious cards. Or she would take them out of our desks. Mrs. Mayhew was the baseball card Nazi.

One time she even pulled me off the school bus before it departed the parking lot and looked in my book bag. Yep, baseball cards. She took them.  At recess, she would sneak up behind us and steal our cards. I half expected her to show up at my house, enter my bedroom and take away my cards.  Mrs. Mayhew always took the cards and put them in bags in a big closet in our classroom. Then she would lock the door and our cards were gone forever.

Back to the school chorus. We had our big spring concert on a Friday night. Mom and Dad were there and probably my sister Mary. I can’t definitively recall if Mary was there or not, but she is irrelevant to the story. She’s still pretty much irrelevant. I say that because I hope she reads this story and gets irritated. That’s what brothers do.

The concert went off without a hitch. We were cheered and it actually felt pretty good. I can’t remember any of the songs we sung but it was a nice night. After the concert, I told my parents I had to go to my classroom to get a book. Which was true. Once in the darkened classroom, just for the heck of it, I decided to turn the knob on the closet door. A jolt of excitement ran through my chest when the door actually opened. In the darkness I could see the outline of bags. Four large bags of baseball cards!

The classroom was on the ground floor. I took the bags to the window andset them outside.  Then I went back to my parents. I told them I had to go to the bathroom.  I went back to the classroom, crawled out the window and hid the bags of cards in the nearby woods. I climbed back into the classroom, locked the window, locked the closet door, and then headed to the front of the school and my patient parents.

I forgot the book I was originally was supposed to get but neither Mom or Dad said anything about it.  All night long I was praying it wouldn’t rain. I was also paranoid, waiting for Mrs. Mayhew to knock on the front door with the police demanding my arrest.  Early the next morning, I rode my bike to Eldorado Elementary School and was able to recover two bags of cards. A return trip brought home the rest. I also had to sneak the cards into the house. My mom was a police officer so it wasn’t easy to get away with things.

Finally, the cards were safe and sound in my house. I had all my cards back and all my classmates cards too. I pulled it off, a true caper!  Monday morning, as I entered Mrs. Mayhew’s class, I was sweating profusely. I knew that she knew what I had done. Nervous doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.

When Mrs. Mayhew went into the closet, I expected her to fly off the handle and immediately know it was me who stole the cards.  Much to my surprise and relief, she never said anything about the missing cards. Ever. For the next week I was a wreck, but nothing ever happened. Mrs. Mayhew never brought up the missing cards although she still was on the lookout for any student possessing baseball cards.  What became of the baseball cards in question? I still have them. They’re in my closet safe and sound and Mrs. Mayhew can’t do a thing about it. She’s dead.

Tags: baseball cards, chorus, Eldorado Elementary School, New York

This entry was posted on February 20th, 2009 and is filed under Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.