Have you ever been accused of doing something that you did not do, but the adults would not believe you? It is terrible. I had that experience the first week of my first grade at school. And I have not forgotten how awful it is.
I was so happy to be starting to school. I loved school. I loved the learning and being with all the kids and I loved most of my teachers. So I always left home happy on my way to school. On the first day at school the teacher told us all about the new toilet that had been built during the summer for us. She told us to look at them later. A new one had been built for the boys and a new one for the girls.
“Now boys, the toilets are new, nice, and clean. Be careful not to get the seats wet or dripped on. And girls, there is to be no standing on and then squatting down over the seats. You are to sit down on the seat when you are using the toilet. The old toilets were so nasty that we did not get onto the girls for squatting over the seat. But now things have changed. We intend to keep these new toilets and seats clean. So no squatting. Girls, do you understand? Do you understand, boys, what you are to do?” the teacher asked with so much authority.
“Yes mam,” the whole first grade class answered at once.
Later when I went out to the new toilets I saw that the teacher was right. The toilets were located at the farthest end of the playground and they were nice. They were painted blue on the outside and white inside. There were twelve seats in the girls toilet. I guess there were the same number in the boys. The seats were painted blue. I was proud of these new toilets. They were very nice.
Each morning the teacher would tell us again how we were to use the toilets.
“Why doesn’t she shut-up,” I thought to myself. “She should know we would do as she asked because we want to keep them clean and pretty.”
A few days later, at recess, I walked into the toilet. I saw this girl, Louise, just as she jumped down onto the floor from her seat. She had wet all over the seat and the floor. I stood there looking at her and not believing what I had just seen. She started past me to go outside, just as our teacher was walking in.
And then a terrible thing happened. She ran to the teacher and said, “Look, look, come and look and see what Lorine did.” By that time the teacher was looking at the wet floor and at me.
“She did it, she did it,” Louise lied as she ran out of the toilet.
“But, but I did not. It was Louise who did it. Louise did it,” I tried to tell the teacher.
But she would not listen to me. For some reason that I never understood, she believed Louise instead of me. She bawled me out and told me to go to the principal of the school and tell him what I had done.
“But I didn’t do it,” I tried to tell her again.
“Go, Go now and tell him,” she told me as she marched me to the principal’s office.
The principal was a short, fat man with a big belly and little beady eyes. It scared me half-to-death just to look at him. I was truly shaking as we entered his office. The teacher told him what had happened and that I was the one who had done it. Then she marched out of his office and back to the classroom. As I stood there, I tried to tell him the truth about the whole matter, but he would not listen to me.
“The teacher said that you did it. That’s good enough for me,” he bellowed. I was so scared, I knew that death was only moments away. But he did nothing to me except bawl me out again and said he would send me home if he ever heard of it again.
I was crushed. Why did they not believe me? Why did they believe Louise instead of me? I was telling the truth. I walked slowly back to my classroom.
Louise looked over at me and grinned a nasty grin. She knew. She knew she had lied and now I had taken the blame for it. I think I almost hated her at that time. But Mama had taught us not to hate anyone. In fact, Mama would not allow us to use the word “hate.” She always corrected us if she heard us use it.
By the next day all the girls thought I had wet the seat and the floor of our new toilet. Louise had told them I had. From that incident, two groups of girls were formed. Some of the girls believed me and became my friends. Others believed Louise and became her friends. It took years for Louise and me to become friends, but we never did become “best” friends. But that incident did not dim my love of school. I still enjoyed every day of it.