The Hairbrush Incident

There were many stories during my years at an all-girl boarding school in England but the hairbrush incident is the one that seems to always come to mind first if I have to think of stories. This is probably because the story stood for rebellion and victory. It happened when I was 14 years old...

It was 11pm and I was already slowly drifting into deep sleep. Suddenly, I was awaken by a familiar sound, a long bell ring that I've heard of a few times from fire drills. My roommate switched on the light and quickly, we put our robes and slippers on, headed out the door of our room, and into the hallway full of wary looking girls.

We were evacuated to the back lawn of the boarding house for a roll call which lasted a few minutes. It was a cold winter evening and the rain drizzle started shortly the roll call was over. I still remember how I shivered and shriveled in my pjs and robe, huddling to my roommates to stay warm and thinking what was taking them so long to get us back inside because clearly, we didn't see any fire! After what it seemed like eternity, we were allowed back into our rooms and if I remembered correctly, we were out there for almost 1.5 hours.

Over the next couple of days, we realized some of our friends at the other boarding house were sent home. 3 of them were conspired to get a glimpse of the guys that were attending the ball with the older girls. How they did it? They broke the glass with a hairbrush to set off the fire alarm. It was a simple and ingenious plan, and their success - legendary for generations to come.