When I was a junior in Akron North High we had a substitute English teacher for a while, and she was almost always late for our class, which met on the third floor. She usually arrived with her arms full of books and papers, out of breath, scolding us, good-naturedly for the most part, into silence. One awful day she was later than usual, and the class was noisier than usual. Erasers were flying, books were sailing. It probably doesn't do any good to tell you that, truthfully, I usually did not take part in the chaos, although I can't say I didn't enjoy it. 

Anyway, on this fateful day one boy Stanley produced a cherry bomb from his pocket. The room got very quiet. Stanley lit a match and we held our breaths. The windows were open they were the kind that the middle pane swung out from the top. Stanley evidently intended to light the bomb in the classroom and throw it out the window toward the athletic field two stories below. We couldn't believe it but Stanley lit the bomb and threw it and it hit the window pane above the open window and bounced back into the middle of the room, under the desks, hissing. Just at that very moment our teacher came breathlessly into the quiet room - quiet except for the hissing - with her arms full of books. But before she had a chance to worry about why we were quiet, or what the hissing sound was, KA-BOOM! the cherry bomb exploded, and instantly the room was full of smoke, and then there was silence again. 

Our teacher did not drop her armload of books. She did not miss a step. She simply went over to the desk and sat down and put her face on the books and papers she had been carrying. I think it may have been a full five minutes that no one said a word, no one made a sound. I imagine today the police would have been called and someone would've been expelled from school, and there certainly would be a lawsuit. But her awful silence, and the fact that we were all shocked and stunned was punishment for us all, even Stanley the bomb-thrower. More than forty-five years later I still feel that little woman's pain and disappointment at the chaos that greeted her coming.