The Trench Coat Connection

The Trench Coat Connection
It was my first year in Manlius Military Academy. The school was just outside Syracuse, New York. I was 13 years old and this was another new experience.
Our first year, fall was short and we quickly found ourselves in New York’s cold, wet period when it was cold, but not cold enough for snow and the uniform of the day always included the long grey trench coats to ward off the cold and rain.
The coats buttoned up the front and were cinched at the waist with a belt. We discovered another feature — the epaulettes on each shoulder that everybody else had taken for granted because it had no use except for officers who used them to hold their lieutenant or captain bars. Until we noticed that the epaulettes had buttons.
One dark and stormy day we were in a classroom during a period that had been set aside for study. We were expected to sit at our desks and read or work on homework. We were able to move around the room quietly to check out some of the resource books along walls on the sides and back of the room.
While getting a book in the back of the room, I passed the area where the trench coats were hanging on hooks. The area resembled a long walk-in closet. Once in that area, you could not see the classroom -- and the classroom, and more importantly, the teacher, could not see you. I stood in the back and flipped through a book, my forehead deeply furrowed as though I was seriously seeking answers to the universe. And I stole glances into the closet, checking out the coats hanging side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, epaulette-to-epaulette. Epaulettes that could be unbuttoned and rebuttoned. There were 15 of them.
Nobody was paying any attention to me. The teacher, sitting at his desk in the front of the room, facing the class, had his head lowered into a book. He was monitoring the class with his ears and not his eyes. I was hoping it was a very good book as I slipped behind the wall that separated the class from the closet.
I reached the first coat and unbuttoned the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the coat next to it and rebuttoned it, attaching the second coat to the first. Cool. That didn’t take long. I moved to the second coat and undid the left epaulette, slipped it under the right epaulette of the third coat and rebuttoned it. Down the row I worked, listening intently for any sound coming from the classroom.
I reached my coat and went on to the next one and then doubled back. Dead give-away if my coat wasn’t also sabotaged, so I connected my coat to the coats on either side of it. In very little time all the coats were attached at the epaulettes. My work was done. I walked back to the beginning of the closet and glanced around the doorway into the classroom. Nobody looking in my direction; the teacher still engrossed in his book. I held my book up to my face, took out my notebook, scribbled some notes, replaced the book back on the shelf and took my seat, studying my notes and waiting for the bell to ring signaling the end of the period. Gary shot me a quizzical look, but I only smiled and went back to pretending to read my notes.
Finally, the buzzer sounded, the teacher snapped shut his book, called us to attention and dismissed us. We all went back to the closet to retrieve our trench coats and bedlam broke loose. Gary complained with the rest, but perhaps I complained too much and too loudly as we all tried to pry our coats apart from the coats attached at the shoulders to coats on either side of them.
The teacher, dressed in a military olive-drab uniform, tried to restore order while at the same time trying to act in authority and get to the bottom of what had happened. He threatened to keep us all in detention until the culprit came forth. Gary looked at me and turned to the teacher and said, “We were all in the room. It was probably somebody from outside who came.” Good move, Gary. Finally, in frustration, the teacher barked that we had 3 minutes to get to our next class and we better get moving and left us to our own devices to straighten out the coat problem. In our haste to leave, most of us left the classroom and dashed to our next classes with our epaulettes flapping in the wind.