Stern Warning

Holy cow! The power of suggestion.

In high school one of my most infamous incidents, and there were a few, was when I was sent from a classroom by a teacher for a stupid act (that hardly warrants describing).

Rather than sending me to the special master for the usual caning I was asked to ponder my crime and then return to announce my own punishment.

Now this was nasty treatment because I had the power to let myself off.

But then of course I would have never lived it down amongst my peers for being so weak.

After much agonising I re-entered the classroom and announced that I should get a ‘stern warning’.

It accidentally worked; everyone was laughing so hard, including the teacher, that the whole incident was lost in the hilarity.

The tag ‘stern warning’ followed me around for years and even to this day an old school mate will occasionally retell the story over a beer.

I always thought that I had come up with this accidental pearler of my own accord.

But today whilst watching the first series of Get Smart (S01E16) with Lola I discovered that I had in fact sponged it off Maxwell Smart, probably years before the incident itself, and totally forgotten about the source.

Life does have a habit of throwing up the odd surprise.