The Mystery of the Missing Workbook

Welcome to Grade 4 through the eyes of a 9 year old me.

Teachers would look through our agenda to make sure of three things: your parents signed it the day before indicating that they had read it, you have all your homework written down correctly, and you’re actually using the book properly. In terms of the obsession over ensuring a parent or guardian’s signature was present, whether it was to keep children on task both at school and at home or to have parents held responsible in the completion of homework, I’ll never know. But some teachers would leave notes on an agenda’s given day, or sometimes several days in it in a row.

Here’s a peek at what one of my grade 4 teachers were leaving me every single day for nearly a week. This is where our story begins.

“No workbook today. It wasn’t in her desk, so it must be at home. Please bring it in by tomorrow.”

“Taylor neglected to bring her workbook back today. Maybe you should help her find it.”

“Your daughter lied to me today about the missing workbook. This is unacceptable and I’m losing my patience.”

“Are you sure you looked everywhere?” my mother asked.

Although I was certain, I took a moment to think about it anyway. I had emptied and gone through my entire backpack and flipped through my binder for good measure. I had checked under my bed, under and behind my dresser, and even took a moment to check my closet (despite the fact it never would have ended up in there anyway). As a last ditch effort, I even tore the bedding off of my bed right down to the mattress, just in case it had magically found its way there and remained undiscovered at some point in time.

It was the third time I’ve looked that thoroughly for that stupid workbook that I knew I didn’t have anywhere.

“I’m sure,” I said confidently, but wasn’t reassured at all by my mom’s ensuing frown.

After a moment she nodded, and went to the living room to speak with my father. He knew about it all of course, as he had already seen the notes in my agenda for himself. Even still, I wasn’t sure whether or not I should follow her into the room due to them both potentially getting mad at me for the fact the workbook was still missing, so I instead hung back and tried to listen in to their conversation. I didn’t want to get yelled at again, the teacher already reprimanded me over that dumb book. I didn’t even remember getting the thing back, so how the heck could I have lost it?

“She still can’t find her book,” my mom said calmly.

“What?” my dad asked, impatient.

“She’s torn her room apart three times now this week and it hasn’t turned up. If it isn’t somewhere else in the house, I don’t think she has it.”

My dad grumbled something I couldn’t quite understand.

“We’ll look anywhere it could have ended up. If we can’t find it, she might just need to be issued a new one. I can’t see it being something she just dropped outside, though. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

Following some colourful language out of my dad, I slowly peeked into the living room with uncertainty. I should at the very least help my parents in the mysterious case of the invisible workbook since, well, it was technically my problem.

“You have no idea where it is?” my dad asked.

“No,” I said, then hesitated. “I don’t even remember getting the thing back. I don’t think I have it.”

With a heavy, frustrated sigh, my father stood up and the three of us — plus the eventual joining of my toddler of a sister who just wanted to be helpful — tore the house apart. My dad went through my backpack’s contents again, he lifted the couches for me to look underneath, we checked in the cushions and between the furniture and walls. We looked inside all of the closets, all of the bedrooms, in and around different parts of our home. Our house was always tidy, so it wasn’t like it would have ended up under a pile of laundry or other sorts of items left about.

We found nothing. The four of us gave up for the night, and I returned to school the next morning empty-handed.

The way my classes worked at the time were to either have teachers trade classes at set times of the day, or for the students to switch the physical class they were in to go to the other teacher’s classroom. That Friday, I didn’t have the workbook-obsessed teacher until the afternoon, so I had all morning to dread it.

When the midday recess rolled around, I was mostly in a state of trying to figure out what to do. What was I going to say? Surely nothing I hadn’t said already, but it felt like no one was believing me. I didn’t have it, I couldn’t find it, and I didn’t have some kind of supernatural ability to procure it. But upon the ring of the school’s bell prompting our return to our classes, I was out of time. Dread washed over me in its cold prickly fury as I stepped through the metal door to reenter the school and walk single-file with the rest of my classmates.

“Do you have a problem with my kid?” a man yelled.

My head shot up and my steps slowed, almost causing the kid behind me to bump into me. There was no mistaking the voice.

“I told you already, she doesn’t have the damn book,” I heard my dad continue.

The commotion attracted other students now, and as we passed the classroom we all peered inside. I came to a stop and stared as other students began cautiously trickling into the classroom, unsure of what else to do. My dad is only around 5’4”, and Mr. M was well over 6’, but that teacher’s face was one of the deepest shades of red that I’d ever seen. He looked embarrassed, nervous and flustered, and my dad looked absolutely furious.

“Well sir, I don’t know what to tell you. She doesn’t have it, I don’t have it. Either she lost it or it’s back at—”

“It’s not at my house, and she doesn’t have the book. She told you all of this herself, and now I’m here telling you the same thing. Are you not listening to me? We tore our house apart looking for this thing. It’s not there.”

A couple of other students gave me nudges to move along back to class as though the argument was none of my concern. I remember one of my friends giving me a gentle tug on the arm to move along. He knew it was my dad, but I was kind of standing in the way. My feet started to move forward again, but I peered into that classroom for as long as I could.

It was one of the days where the teachers swapped classrooms rather than the students swapping classrooms. While everyone was seated in their desks, our regular teacher had stuck around the classroom for a little longer than normal. The students were murmuring, some of them about how, ‘Mr. M was getting a talking to’ while others went on about their activities during recess. Eventually our teacher left, but it was still a few minutes before the Mr. M showed up.

For the duration of his lecture, he didn’t so much as look at me. He didn’t prompt me to answer anything during his lecture, he didn’t ask to look at my agenda (let alone write another note in it) and he didn’t ask me about my workbook. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it; I was relieved in the meantime because he left me alone, but that other part of me still wondered if I was in trouble and this was some kind of a pending doom. Was he going to give me a detention and wait to reprimand me once the rest of the students had left the class?

He didn’t.

The class proceeded as normal otherwise, and I was free to leave with the rest of the students at the end of the day. When returning home I was asked if anything happened today, and both parents seemed happy to hear that there were no new notes in my agenda.

The following day, my class had to go into Mr. M’s classroom that morning. Almost immediately after I seated myself in a desk, the teacher came up to me and I stared, dumbfounded. Mr. M presented me with my damn workbook, plopping it onto my desk like it hadn’t been a big deal at all. He apologized, telling me that the book had been misplaced in his house the whole time.

If my dad never went in to talk to Mr. M, I don’t know how much longer this teacher’s crap would have gone on for. But besides that, it really taught me something. My dad trusted me. My dad was there for me and would back me up and help me if I needed it, and he wouldn’t back down. He taught me to stand up for myself, and that truth will prevail, even if it takes a little bit of time.