Rules

    I’m really hung up on rules, far more than the average bear.
    In third grade, my teacher’s name was Mrs. Bunce. In a school where the average teacher was close to sixty years old, she was quite young, perhaps twenty-five years old. She had come from Kentucky and she was an exotic outsider in my little New England town. She only taught at my school for one year; I think her husband must have been in the Air Force, assigned to Westover Field in Chicopee, MA. She moved back to Kentucky at the end of the year and I never saw her again, but I really liked her. I liked anyone who was, in general, kind.
    Third graders are not as needy as first graders but they are still little kids. Mrs. Bunce was trying to wean us from our neediness while still maintaining discipline, so she instituted a number of rules for our class. One rule was that no could leave the classroom without her permission. Another was, no one was allowed to interrupt her while she was working with a group.
    I was sitting in my seat, working on math problems. Mrs. Bunce had divided the class of about twenty-five kids into four or five groups, according to our levels of comprehension. I was always in the top group and we were usually set to work without direct supervision while she worked with the kids who struggled.
    Drip. A large drop of blood had plopped onto my worksheet. I had felt its warm liquidity flow down the inside of my nose from wherever it had leaked, to escape through the tip of my nostril. I had seen it, like a shining crimson jewel, glistening in midair just before it struck the whiteness of the page. It was lovely. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I would suffer from chronic nosebleeds every winter until I was put on daily antihistamines for my allergies. Drip. My nose dripped a second time before I could stand up. I brushed the page with my hand, smudging the bloodstain, then cupped my hands under my nose to catch a third drop. I walked carefully to the front of the room, behind the teacher’s desk, to the circled small group, my face tipped over my cupped hands. Drip. I stood next to the back of Mrs. Bunce’s chair as she sat in the circle, leaning up to write on the blackboard, patiently explaining the lesson once again to the mathematically confused kids.
    I started to say, “Mrs Bunce?” but before I could finish my query, she held up her hand and in a commanding tone, still facing the blackboard and the group, said, “Wait. I’m working with this group.” Politely, I waited, my hands slowly filling with blood as my nose steadily and inexorably dripped.
    She continued talking to the group for about five minutes. My hands were just about to overflow when she finally turned, a bit annoyed, to see what I wanted. She gasped. I said in a nasal tone, trying hard to not expel any air through my nose as it would only exacerbate the flow, “May I go to the nurse?”
    She turned over her chair in her haste as she scrambled to her feet, grabbed my wrist, and led me out of the room. Some blood spilled onto the tile floor. This was before AIDS and any concern over biohazards; she was mostly worried about getting bloodstains on her clothing. I tried to continue catching the drops but my hands were too full and I left a trail of drips all the way down the hall to the nurse’s office. The nurse, seeing my bloody hands and face, grabbed a fistful of paper towels, dampened them, and cleaned up the worst of my mess. She then handed me a wad of tissues to with which to wipe my nose. Once I was safely in the care of the nurse, Mrs. Bunce quickly returned to the classroom, before the kids could go completely berserk in her absence. The nurse called the janitor and he cleaned up the blood trail; he ducked into the nurse’s cubicle briefly to get the last drops off of the floor. Swishing his mop across the tiles, he reassured me that blood was no big deal for him and a lot nicer than the usual mess of puke from a sick kid.
    The nurse sat me in a chair and tipped my head back, putting an ice pack on the bridge of my nose. Initially, the coppery taste of blood running down the back of my throat was nauseating but the ice pack quickly encouraged it to clot. The nurse gave me some juice to take away the worst of the bloody flavor. I had stuffed some tissues into the end of my nose to act as a cork. After a short time, my nose stopped bleeding and I was able to remove the blob of tissue. The nurse told me not to blow my nose for at least a day and gave me more tissues to dab gently at the tip. I washed my hands and face in her sink; I was pretty gory but my clothes had stayed clean. I rejoined my peers in the lunchroom, then went to read a book in the classroom when they went outside for recess. Mrs. Bunce was waiting for me.
    Mrs. Bunce was upset; she wanted to know why I had waited quietly instead of going to the nurse immediately. In a surprised tone, I reminded her of the classroom rules. She was speechless. She didn’t want to scold me for following the rules but she was also concerned about my bleeding while waiting for her permission to leave. She said nothing more about my behavior, just asked if I felt up to working. Again, I was surprised; since the nurse had sent me back to class, of course I could work. Mrs. Bunce gave me a new copy of the paper that I had been working on and suggested that I finish it for homework, and that I could do free-reading for the rest of the day. Since I loved free-reading, I was content.
    When recess ended and the class returned, Mrs. Bunce told everyone that while, in general, no one was allowed to leave the room without permission, bleeding or puking were exceptions. I nodded, but was often unsure what constituted an appropriate reason to break rules. Her rules stayed with me throughout my schooling and I always found it difficult to leave any classroom, not matter how valid my reasoning.
    In retrospect, I wonder what Mrs. Bunce thought. I was, and continued to be, her star pupil but I had little sense of self-preservation; I had exhibited no common sense. I was academically smart but I had a lot of trouble with the grey areas of social behavior. It wasn’t enough to comment about on my report card but, in retrospect, she was greatly troubled that day by my too-polite behavior. Later, there were extended discussions in educational literature about different types of intelligence, but at the time, I wonder what she thought about my dichotomous abilities. She may have just thought that I was overly socialized in stereotypical girl behavior, and I suspect that this is part of my problem with breaking rules.

    I continue to find it difficult to break rules, particularly ones that were instilled into me at an early age, and I feel guilty when I do break them. It took years before I could leave lights on overnight or turn up the thermostat. My town has mandatory recycling; I find myself saving recyclables for weeks or even months if I forget to haul out the can on trash day.  And I try to never waste anything. If something can be reused, I save it. I’ve got a house full of stuff that I don’t want but my father’s words about “Waste not, want not,” still ring in my ears. I’m going to get rid of a giant bag of old shoes on the next recycling day, no matter what. If someone can use them, terrific, but I want them OUT of my house! I’m working my way across my office as I write, bagging up things to give away or throw away. I just have to actually haul the bags out and deliver them to their appropriate destinations! I’ve got to make a new rule about getting rid of something before I can bring anything new into the house. May be that will work.