High School Wood Shop

In my tiny high school the "slow" students shared certain classes with the rest of us, like shop, home economics, gym and music. Anyway, in wood shop the wood for projects was stored in a cool, dark crawl space under the school. You got to it by opening a heavy steel lattice gate at the end of a dead end hallway. Our shop teacher left the open padlock hanging on the gate.

I got the bright idea to paint a bunch of rocks with metallic gold paint and scatter them in the wood storage area. Then my buddies and I started acting very secretive during class (there was little structure or supervision) and whispering about the gold in hushed yet excited tones. But the special ed'ers were on to us. Eventually we let it slip that the gold was in the wood storage room. From afar we watched the enthusiastic treasure hunters assemble and disappear around the corner and down the dead end hallway.

When we arrived at the wood room door they had found the "gold" and were overjoyed. They were rich! But their celebration came to an abrupt end as the metal gate slammed shut behind them and the lock snapped closed. They rushed to the gate and clamored to escape. It was kind of like the asylum scene in Silence of the Lambs. After a couple minutes of taunting we left them in their dank, dark prison.

Maybe a half hour later the shop teacher tracked us down and asked us to please not lock Franny and Kenny in the wood room. I think he was trying to keep a straight face.