When You Gotta Go

I could not ignore his poke in the ribs;
Tater Sullivan was at it again;
He wanted answers, and fast, did His Nibs,
Which I must supply or suffer the pain!
It was his test, in repeat of fifth grade,
Well on his way to reform school or jail;
With my help, an F he hoped to evade,
And maybe, just maybe, he would not fail.
But, baptized Sunday, and full of new hope,
To live without sin the rest of my days;
Cheating on a test was no way to cope
With the Ten Commandments and Bible ways!
So I held up my hand, one finger showing,
Shot outta there, to the boys' room going!

"Tater" Sullivan, our bully in the fifth grade, depended upon his seat partner for test answers. It so happened that Miss Guest (no married ladies allowed to teach school then) had assigned me to sit with Tater on a Geography test that day. I knew it was coming, and she did, too; it was his second year in her class. No social promotions then, but after two years in the same grade a pupil quit school or was not so politely moved up.

Tater was not crafty. When he wanted a classmate to supply him with an answer, he elbowed his seat-mate and pointed at the question. I had read his test ahead, and I knew he couldn't answer the question. "Who discovered the Mississippi River?" Miss Guest knew what to watch for, and she was standing two feet behind the two of us.

One of the first school rules drilled into us was that cheating on a test brought equal punishment to the supplier and the recipient. I was between the Scylla of being exposed as a cheat, and the Charybdis of a sound thrashing by Tater if I refused. I was 9 years old, had just given my heart to Jesus and been baptized. Fresh in my mind were the words of Brother Bookter (all the men in church were called Brother and the women Sister) as he lowered me under the water, "Buried with Jesus in baptism,"---dunk---"raised to new life in His love." I remember wondering at the time, "What would he say if he dropped somebody down there?"

My ruse worked; well, sort of. After school I shot out and caught up with Claud, my cousin, and the bully of sixth grade, He was two years older than Tater. So I got home safely, but Tater was waiting the next morning. The Bible says people should be grateful for suffering for Jesus, and so for two weeks I was very grateful for my bloody nose and black eye. I told Mrs. Bookter, my Sunday School teacher, I had suffered for Jesus.