Summary

The story opens with the narrator briefly noting that Terence Velan—one of the narrator’s fourth grade classmates—grew up to be a decorated war veteran. The story then opens in the year 1960 in an elementary school—R.B Hayes Primary School—in Columbus, Ohio. The unnamed narrator recalls the story in a retrospective manner. At the time of the story, he was in the fourth grade, and his usual teacher, Mrs. Roseman, was on maternity leave. The long-term substitute teacher was named Richard Johnson. The narrator says that the story takes place during a civics lesson and concerns the time that he and three other students became “Unwitting Hostages” (67) because they had been too distracted or mentally undeveloped to sense the potential danger of the incident. The narrator was sitting next to a window, which Mrs. Roseman would not have allowed, as...