Miss Macpherson's Mailbox

One of my teachers in primary school had a classroom mailbox (as in a snail mail box). You could write a letter to anyone in the class, and before home time on Friday, she would distribute the letters. It was cute, but I'm not entirely sure what it was supposed to achieve. It usually ended up with people writing letters to their friends, and since we tended to just talk to each other anyway, the letters were fairly short, probably average about 25 words.

I remember one exchange of letters between me and one of the other students. He asked me how long it took me to set up my SNES, and we ended up writing a bunch of letters on gaming. Was that our childish attempt at flirting? In any case, nothing ever came of it, as we ended up going to different high schools. Although, we met up again at uni, and he was the one to introduce me to AP (no EM) DotA.

At one point, the number of letters dropped quite drastically, and so Miss Macpherson put in a new policy - that each student must write at least two letters each week, and they could not write to the same two people each week. Which made things a bit weird, as you might receive a letter asking what you did on the weekend, but you weren't allowed to write a reply. So what followed was a bunch of awkwardly written letters, that were really just templates, with the name in the To field changed each week.

To add something interesting, I started sending some riddles to different people in my class. I really loved riddles, but I had nobody to share it with, as nobody in my family really cared for them, and none of my immediate friends. I signed the letters as 'MK', inspired by the Mischief Knights from the Babysitters Club. To be honest, I wasn't all that great at being secretive about it. Some of my friends had also read the same book (although nobody made the connection). Plus, when putting one of the MK letters in the mailbox, I had accidentally put it inside one of the other letters I had written, so when Miss Macpherson started giving them out, the person who got that letter found the MK letter inside it. 

However, I did make it to the end of the year without being discovered, at least, I don't think I was ever discovered, but after two weeks of these riddle letters, Miss Macpherson got really mad. She sat the class down and demanded that MK reveal themselves. I had never been in trouble for anything before, so I didn't say anything. So we all sat there looking around waiting for the person to reveal themselves. Unfortunately, there was nobody willing to pull an "I'm Spartacus" moment for me, so nobody revealed themselves and Miss Macpherson decided to ban the mailbox.

I didn't understand what the big deal was - all I did was send some riddles out to people. There were no insults or anything like that, the only thing was that I didn't sign the letters with my own name. It was actually a bit nice, to get some relief from the mandatory letter sending, but a part of me felt bad for inadvertently causing the mailbox to get banned. That wasn't enough to make me confess though, as I was still more worried about getting in trouble. Though since I'd never been "in trouble" before, I really didn't know what to expect at all. I had no idea what punishment I was avoiding, I just really didn't want my parents to find out.

I don't remember what happened with the mailbox in the end, and it was my final year at that school, so I don't know if Miss Macpherson brought it back the year after. I'd like to say that this was my first taste of being rebellious, but that wasn't my intention at all, so I got none of that adrenalin that comes from doing something you know is wrong. Whenever I think of the mailbox, it makes me wonder if sometimes the things I find fun can go to far. I thought the entire thing was a harmless joke, but if it caused Miss Macpherson to ban the mailbox, then there must have been something wrong with it. Maybe some of the students felt left out that they never received a riddle, but I think I only managed to send out 4 or 5 before it got banned, so I would have gotten to them eventually! Maybe that's why I'm always neurotic about offending people now.