At Brookside Elementary in Waterville back in the day, there was a corn-fed mule of a kid, three times the size of an average boy, named Nelson. Word on the playground was that Nelson was once an alligator wrestler or that he had served time in prison, depending on who was spreading the tale that day.

What I know to be true was that Nelson had a fondness for sitting on smaller boys on the playground for no apparent reason. Sometimes the Nelson-sitting torture lasted only as long as a typical four-square game. Other times, the poor wretch beneath Nelson’s bulk remained there for the duration of recess.

It hinged on what kind of mood the big moose was in that day.

Nobody wanted to be the one to squirm under Nelson’s Winnebago heft because A) it would mean missing precious recess minutes and B) Nelson smelled like wet dog.

Every year when it was time to go back to school, we wondered with trembling anticipation how much Nelson had grown over the summer and who he would choose to sit upon first. It would have made the return to class a dismal affair were it not for a few factors that offset the threat. At Brookside, these factors came with the names of Becky and Susan, to name the most notable pair.

Becky and Susan were girls who appeared to be developing at a faster rate than the other girls. Each year, I somewhat sprinted back to Brookside to see the changes they had undergone and to try out new pickup lines I had worked on over the summer.

“Hey, baby. How’d you like to see your name in red ink on my paper- bag book cover this year?”

Call me lame if you want to, friend. But Becky kicked me in the shin with her hard, pointy shoes and Susan ran off and told a teacher when I laid that line on them. If you know anything at all, you know that is a sign of schoolyard love.

Also paradoxical about the return to Brookside was the opposing natures of the teachers we would face.

Mr. Spencer was a war veteran who was constantly picking old artillery fragments out of his scalp. He had a quick temper and no qualms about doling out punishment on misbehaving boys right there at the front of the class where Becky and Susan could watch and titter.

Grab a hall pass and walk down two doors and you’d find Miss Jones, a pretty, young teacher who almost never yelled. She let her students keep daily diaries and even let them share with the rest of the class. Miss Jones (it was important to me in ways I can’t describe that she was a Miss rather than a Mrs.) was all shiny apples and singing birds where Mr. Spencer was knuckle-rapping, ear-yanking wrath.

Everything about that first day of school was in conflict. I would stand in front of the doors, radiant in my new plaid pants and turtleneck, pondering the next 10 months of captivity the way a wrongly convicted prisoner ponders years of incarceration. I would stand in lunchbox-gripping despair wondering where the hell summer went and how I would survive this long period of lockup.

At the same time, there were always a few new girls in school and many of them really dug skinny kids in turtlenecks. And there was a fresh opportunity to establish oneself as a cool kid who could hit a ball farther, win more playground fights, tell dirtier and more sophisticated jokes than the year before.

With black dread and blooming hope came the first day of school, with its chalk-reeking, bell-shrilling, put-your-head-down-on-the-desk-you-young-heathen uncertainty.

On the dread side was the death of summer and all of its glories. On the hope side were the blossoming goodness of Becky and Susan and related types.

And yet for me, dread won out. I don’t have to go back to that captivity anymore, but the appearance of “Back to school” signs, like poisonous flowers that grow in late summer, hollows me out with an old, familiar misery. The mere sight of a long, yellow bus – ships hauling the doomed to slavery – can ruin my day and fill me with a kind of bitterness I should have long ago outgrown.

A year or two back, I wrote about some of the teachers who vexed me when I was a school lad. The result was a flurry of letters from present-day teachers so angry that spittle flew right off the pages and into my face.

“Dear ungrateful, uneducated, despicable miscreant …”

To me, it sounded like that “mwap mwap mwaaaa” voice from the “Peanuts” cartoons. But I’ve learned my lesson. Because every teacher I ever sat before taught me something invaluable, even the mean ones. Maybe the mean ones in particular.

Mr. Spencer taught me about accountability and the importance of punishment as a deterrent. Miss Jones (I love you!) instilled in me a great passion for creative pursuits and the thrill of sharing them.

Farther along down the hall, Mrs. Mayberry taught me that even old people like rock ‘n’ roll and Mrs. Hackett bequeathed the lesson that you should never try to pass a note detailing the blossoming goodness of Becky and Susan if you did not want to hear that note read aloud to the class.

I developed into this righteous being under the guidance of those teachers, even if I was never aware of the lessons as they were being imparted. I went on to sneak cigarettes and throw eggs at houses but I always felt guilty about it and the threat of Mr. Spencer-style punishment usually prevented me from going further.

I thrived socially with the encouragement of my instructors, too, and if you don’t believe me, ask the beautified Becky or the sultry Susan. For a magical time in the fourth grade, I secretly dated both of them. And how do you like me now?

A real schoolyard dog was I, with Becky’s name scribbled on one side of my school book, Susan’s on the other.

Unfortunately, Nelson got hold of me at about that time and the whole sordid affair fell apart as I lie squirming in the playground dirt. Becky and Susan, bless their developments, moved on to another boy who wasn’t bleeding into the dirt and crying for his mother. And that was that.

Another playground lesson that came with the swiftness and pain of a kick to the shin with pointy shoes.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].