In our rural community, we didn’t have phones till the early sixties.Only one or two mothers in the whole community worked. Most families had only one car, so women were most likely home unless they walked to a near neighbor’s home for coffee accompanied by their infants and toddlers. The point of this story is, when we got in trouble at school, the news often beat us home. I don’t know how, but Mother invariably knew what I’d gotten in trouble for.
I suspect my older sister may have ratted me out, or the teacher sent a sneaky note home by her, but news always got home. A few times, my mother heard through the grapevine. It was certainly a different day and time. Should my offense be minor, Mother took care of the problem, but if it were a matter heinous enough to warrant a note or invitation to a conference at school, I had to deal with Daddy. That was never nice. It would have been so much happier for me if my parents had held the teacher’s attitude or methods responsible, but alas, the judgment came right back to me.
school
Working Things Out With Chris
original art by Kathleen Holdaway Swain
Chris was the meanest kid around. He threw rocks, kicked his dog, stole lunch money out of desks, broke in line for lunch, and was sassy to the teacher. He had a giant pile of sand in his yard and dared anyone come near it. All the kids avoided him.
This was a problem for me and my brother Billy when Mother visited Miss Alice, Chris’s next door neighbor. We sure didn’t want him to spot us so we always played in the far side of her shady yard. One day, we were making villages of stick houses with mossy fields and sandy tracks for roads when, out of nowhere, POW!! A rock popped me on the head, knocking me goofy. When I quit seeing stars, I heard Chris laughing, “Ha! Made you look!”
Look nothing!! He nearly made me dead!! We jumped up and chased him, but he left us in his dust, fuming! We had to come up with a plan to get that creep. We puzzled and plotted the rest of the day. He was the biggest, fastest, meanest bully around, so we’d have to outsmart him. We decided to spy on him the next time Mother went to visit Miss Alice.
We got our big chance the next day. He glared when we went in her gate, just waiting to torture us. The ladies decided to drink their tea in the backyard. Even Chris knew he couldn’t us get at us with adults around, so he skulked back to his own yard and kicked at his dog to cheer himself up. We lay on our stomachs and crawled into the bushes to spy on him as he stomped over to where his mother was working in her flower bed.
Chris was even mean to his mother. He sassed her when she told him to help, stepped on her flowers, sprayed the cat with water, and kicked over the flower pots. Suddenly, he went crazy jumping and screaming. When she finally caught up with him, she said, “Chris, it’s nothing but a little bitty frog!!! He can’t hurt you!! Just stay still and I’ll get him. I don’t know why you’re so scared of a little bitty frog.”
That big bully was bawling like a baby. “Get him off! Get him off! Get him off!!! I hate frogs!” We had our plan!
We headed to the pond and collected a few frogs as soon as we got home. The next morning at school I slipped in to the class room and got to work hiding frogs. I put a couple in Chris’s desk, a couple in his pencil box, and slipped a really nice one in the pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of his desk. I barely finished before the first bell rang. Chris strolled in after the last bell. All I had to do now was wait. I did wish Billy could be here for the fun.
The frogs stayed quiet as we all settled down. I kept waiting for the fun to start. After a while, I got involved in a story the teacher was reading and forgot about the frogs. That’s when it happened. “Ribbitt! Ribbitt! Ribbitt!” We all started giggling.
“Who did that?” Miz McZumley was not amused.
“Ribbitt!! Ribbitt!!” Kids guffawed! The class was out of control.
Miz McZumley whacked her ruler down on her desk. “That does it! Storytime is over! Get out your pencils and workbooks.”
You can imagine what happened next. Two fine frogs jumped out of Chris’s desk. He screamed and ran in place. The whole class was hysterical as they chased frogs. The teacher was furious at Chris for bringing frogs to class. He blubbered a pathetic defense “I didn’t!! I didn’t! I hate frogs!” Two more frogs jumped out of his desk, looking for their buddies.
“Then where did all these frogs come from?” She wasn’t convinced. Chris got paddled and was sentenced to pick up trash at recess. I couldn’t wait for him to put on his jacket!!! My bully problems were over. There were going to be a lot of frogs in Chris’s future.
Kathleen Carries On Part 11 or I Need a Duck Suit
“The teacher said I gotta have a duck suit Friday,” announced Billy, a second-grader. “I gotta be a duck in a stupid play, Friday”
“What?” demanded Mother, feeling panic rise in her gut.”where am I supposed to get a duck suit?”
Fortunately, the next day was Thursday, payday, but where in the world do you get a duck suit? In a panic, she called her friend who had a kid in the same class.”
“Ruby, Billy has to have a duck suit Friday for a play. Where am I going to find a duck suit? I don’t have time to make one.”
“He’s not gonna be a duck. He’s gonna be a duke and escort a duchess in a program. The boys have to wear suits and the girls have to wear their best dresses.”
“Oh, so now all I have to do is come up with a suit by Friday.” She moaned, dreading the cost.
I am sorry she found out the truth. It would have been so much mote interesting if he’d shown up in a duck suit .
A Hog a Day Part 18
In some ways, my older sister Phyllis was a parent’s dream. She would walk a mile to follow a rule and was always on the lookout to alert my parents of mine and Billy’s actual or suspected transgressions. We must have been satisfying siblings to a natural-born tattler. On occasion she would report, “Linda did such and such.”
Most of the time, Mother either took action or sent Phyllis back to straighten me out. However, once in a while, Mother replied, “That’s okay.”
Realizing she’d needlessly missed out on the fun, she’d ask. “Then can I?”
Phyllis was a perfect student and never missed a spelling words the whole time she was in grade school except for forgetting to dot the I in President and not crossing the T in Grandfather. When I followed three years behind her, the teacher always said, “Oh, you’re Phyllis’s sister. She was the best kid in class and always did such neat work.” I was so proud the first time I heard that ominous description, totally unaware that I wouldn’t be shooed into that position with no effort on my part. I thought the role was inherited, not earned. I wasn’t even on the good kid list. I was sloppy, careless in my work, chattered incessantly, rarely got to class with homework or school supplies, and was best-known for staring out the window when I should have been listening. Billy, who followed three years behind me probably dealt with a whole new type of comparison. The second day of school, I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mother and Daddy that Mrs. Crow said I was a scatterbrain, having no idea it was not an honor. It didn’t take long for Daddy to bring me up to speed on that.
I was fairly bouncing my first day of school, delighted with my red and green-checked book satchel and school supplies. I’d been admiring the two fat yellow, pencils, box of eight chubby crayons, jar of paste, blunt-ended scissors, and Big Chief tablet for days. When Mrs. Crow had us introduce ourselves, I was horrified to find I was sitting next to a girl named Virginia. Weeks before I started school, Phyllis had misinformed me that the name of female genitalia was Virginia. I couldn’t imagine what would make any parent name their little girl after that particular body part, but knew I wouldn’t be able to talk to her. I might get in trouble for talking dirty. If that wasn’t bad enough, the boy on the other side of me was named Peter! I hadn’t been in class an hour before Mrs. Crow confiscated my paste just because I tasted it, finding it sweet, but pretty bland. She didn’t like it when I stuck my fat yellow pencil up my nose, either. My school experience was going downhill fast.
Charley’s Tale Part 3
School become a hostile place for Charley. When boys and girls started pairing off, Charley found herself on the outside. Finding no particular boy attractive, she was confused to hear girls continuously chatter “Johnny, David, or Mark is cute.” None of them were cute to her. They were just boys, no different than last month or last year. Wanting to fit in, she offered up the observation, “Robert is cute.” The snide group burst into laughter, ridiculing her and Robert. Apparent, the skinny red-headed lad hadn’t made the standard cute list. Sing-song shouts of “Charley loves Robert” rang to the treetops. Bashful Robert was humiliated to find himself the focus of the girls’ ridicule and fled the crowd. From then on he avoided Charley like the plague. Shame and rejection darkened her perception of herself. She withdrew, feeling it was as though she had a target on her back. The meaner of her tormentors them resurrected stories about her mother’s madness and labeled her “Crazy Charlsie!” The torment was relentless.
The Barnes children from next door were as familiar to Charley as breathing, a bright spot in her desert. The twin boys were a year older and Julia a year younger. They’d played cops and robbers, ball, ridden bicycles and built a treehouse together. When the darkness descended at school, she depended even more on their friendship. They were always able to take her mind off the confusing changes she faced. With Charley approaching puberty, Mrs. Barnes sought to put some distance between Charley and the boys. She forbade horseplay and physical contact, fearing it would awaken young sexuality. This abrupt change confused Charley further. One morning after a sleepover, Mrs. Barnes went in to wake the girls for breakfast and found Charlie’s arm draped cozily Julia, signaling the end of their close friendship.
One morning Charley didn’t come down when Cora called her for breakfast. Cora found her in the bathroom staring dully at her bloodstained panties. “I’m dying, Cora. Why is this happening to me? You’d better call my father.” She spoke in a monotone.
“Aw Lawdy, Honey. You ain’t dying. You just got the curse. That means you can have a baby now. Don’t you let no boys be kissing you. You gonna bleed a few days ever’ twenty-eight days now till you ’bout forty. You’ll git used to it. I meant to talk to you ‘fore it happened an’ it done slipped up on us. Let me get you a pad and belt an’ I’ll show you what to do.” Cora thought she was comforting Charlie.
Charley was appalled at this unwelcome news. “I don’t want to be a woman. What if somebody finds out about this? I ain’t going to school. Everybody already laughs at me. I wish I could just run off somewhere and live by myself. I can’t stand this!” Charley wailed.
“Yes, you can! Won’t nobody know if you don’t tell ’em. Ain’t no way nobody would as long as you keep your pad changed an’ don’t slip up an’ soil yourself. You need keep a spare pad in your purse. If you start at school, you can get one from the gym teacher.” Cora continued her talk. “You can’t swim, take a bath, ner wash you hair during your period or you might make it stop. Be real careful not to go out barefooted with dew on the ground, neither. That’s the worst. I had a friend once that done all that an’ once she finally had chillun’ ever’ one of ’em had fits. You know what fits is, don’t you? You wouldn’t want to do nuthin’ to make yore pore little chillun’ have fits, would you?” Cora waxed colorful in her warnings as Charley’s spirits hit the dirt.
“Cora, I never carried a purse in my life. Can you imagine all the laughing if if start dragging a purse a few days a month? There ain’t no way I could ask the gym teacher for nothing. She hates me. How can I go to school if I can’t take a bath? I’ll just stay home if I get another curse and you don’t need to worry about me kissing a boy! I’d sooner kiss a pig than that mean bunch up at school. I ain’t gonna marry so there ain’t gonna be no kids to have fits.” Charley was working up a good mad as though Cora was responsible for the insult of her menstrual cycle.
“Charley, ain’t no use in carrying on so over God’s doing. Now you just git yourself ready an’ git on to school. Take a pad with you an’ you’ll do fine. You can put it in your lunch bag an’ leave it in your locker to change after lunch. Now, scoot!”
With a miserable scowl, Charley collected her things and stomped out the back door furious at Cora, herself, and the world.
Bad News Travels Fast!
In our rural community, we didn’t have phones till the early sixties.Only one or two mothers in the whole community worked. Most families had only one car, so women were most likely home unless they walked to a near neighbor’s home for coffee accompanied by their infants and toddlers. The point of this story is, when we got in trouble at school, the news often beat us home. I don’t know how, but Mother invariably knew what I’d gotten in trouble for. I suspect my older sister may have ratted me out, or the teacher sent a sneaky note home by her, but news always got home. A few times, my mother heard through the grapevine. It was certainly a different day and time. Should my offense be minor, Mother took care of the problem, but if it were a matter heinous enough to warrant a note or invitation to a conference at school, I had to deal with Daddy. That was never nice. It would have been so much happier for me if my parents had held the teacher’s attitude or methods responsible, but alas, the judgment came right back to me.
Goody, Goody! Goody, Goody!
The first and last days of school I got called down for running my mouth, and probably every day between. Born without a muffler or filter it paid off handsomely if not happily.
My sister, Phyllis, on the other hand was the model of decorum and every teachers’ darling. It was unlikely she ever got scolded, but she often had to be told to “let someone else answer.” Of course, she knew all the answers, since she did all her homework as soon as she got in from school. From her earliest days, it was obvious she’d be a wonderful teacher, which she was. All her games revolved around playing school, especially after my teacher relatives passed discarded textbooks on to us.
Many of those books were still in use in our classrooms. Imagine her joy when she poured over them and started school way ahead of her class. I was not so much interested in the textbooks and playing school. That’s where our trouble lay. She expected me to be her perfect student, as we went from reading to math to science to geography.
I was all in to the reading lesson, but ready to go when we moved on. That wasn’t how her school worked. She’d get her fly-back paddle after me, so school was over and the fight was on. I never hung around too long. She’d go to Mother to back up her discipline and get disappointed time after time. Homeschooling just didn’t work for her.
To my great joy, Phyllis did get in trouble one time. In the first grade, she shared a desk with Richard. Travis sat right behind them. When Mrs. Hanks passed back their work, Phyllis and Richard got an A. Travis got an F. Phyllis and Richard turned around and sang to him, “Goody, goody Travis.” Mrs. Hanks called them to the front of the class and made them sing to each other, “Goody, goody, Phyllis. Goody, goody, Richard.”
Of course, Phyllis came straight home with the story of how she’d suffered, only to get more trouble. That took care of their classroom “Goody, goodies” but I think I still heard it at home a few times.
Her Facts Didn’t Run
Our school was tiny, so tiny that even with two grades sharing a room and teacher, there were still usually less than fifteen students in the two grades. The good news was, if you didn’t learn everything you should have in second grade math, you got another crack at it in third grade while the new second grade covered the same material. Though each class used different books, the lessons sounded much the same.
With the large families of the fifties and sixties, it was inevitable that teachers taught entire families over the years. This wasn’t a problem for the good student. I followed Phyllis, perfection incarnate. She studied the rule book at night for extra credit. Billy was lucky enough to come right behind me, a scatterbrain known for daydreaming and chattering in class. The only thing he had to contend with was “I hope you sit still and pay attention better than your sister.” I don’t think it worried him much. At the end of the line came Connie and Marilyn, only a year apart in age. They shared classrooms most of the time.
Marcia and Darcy, the twins, were the jewels in the crown of Miz McZumley’s teaching career, the classroom darlings. Unlike most harried, fertile mothers of our classmates, their unfortunate mother had only two children. She hovered over them, made all their identical outfits and sent crust less sandwiches, carrot sticks and home baked cookies in their lunches. They probably owned more clothes than the rest of the ragtag class put together. Worst of all, they were bashful, well-behaved children who always got to school with their homework, signed permission slips and lunch money. It was hard to find fault with them aside from pure envy. Despite being held up as examples of “all things bright and beautiful,” they were still nice kids.
Miz McZumley was adamant about two things; learning your addition and subtraction “facts” and going to the bathroom during recess. On one particularly difficult day, she had been drilling the class on their facts rigorously the period just before lunch. Frustrated with the lack of progress, she barked at the class to put their “fact sheets” away under their desks. A boy foolishly asked to go to the bathroom. She slammed her book down and roared, “NO!! You’ll be going out to lunch in fifteen minutes. I’ll spank the next one who asks to go to the bathroom.”
All over the classroom, nervous bladders spasmed. As luck would have it, one of the shyest kids in class had the fullest bladder. Poor Marcia’s bladder panicked and a golden stream trickled down, pooling on the books and papers on the shelf under her desk and the floor. Kids tittered until Miz McZumley noticed the problem. In a moment of kindness she sent the class outdoors, letting some of the girls stay to help Marcia gather her books and papers to lie on the window sill to “air out.” That evening Connie and Marilyn couldn’t wait to report Marcia’s disaster, but were relieved that, in spite of being wet, “her facts didn’t run.”
Hell No, I Just Got Here
Robby Bobby’s school career didn’t really start well. Sharing the same first grade class as his older brother Frank who was giving first grade a second try, he didn’t really get the big picture. He left his seat and headed for the playground when class got dull. Since Frank knew his way around, he grabbed Robby Bobby, dragging him back to his desk. Robby Bobby piled into him and the fight was on. The teacher untangled them, sending them both back to their seats. Shortly thereafter, Miss Burns surveyed the class, going down the line. “Do you know your alphabet? Can you count to ten?” When she quizzed Robby Bobby, he was clearly disgusted. “Robby Bobby, do you know your numbers and letters?”
“Hell no!! I just got here!” he spouted, earning a paddling on the first day of school. News of the paddling beat Robby Bobby home. At that time, a paddling at school was usually followed up by a “whooping” at home to reinforce the point, adding injury to insult. Robby Bobby dreaded seeing his daddy come home. His mama made sure he knew what was coming. Mr. Peters didn’t say a word about school, leading Robby Bobby to hope Daddy hadn’t heard, but he kept quiet at supper. After supper, his daddy took him by the hand leading him to the woodshed, the whooping place. As they walked toward it in the dark, Robby Bobby trembled in fear of what was coming. Daddy asked in his low voice, ”What’s the matter with you, boy?”
“I’m skeert.”
“Ain’t no need to be skeert, boy. I’m right here with you.” Somehow, Robby Bobby didn’t feel much better.
Robby Bobby never really took to school. Following the family tradition, he was held back a couple of times. He roamed the playground, looking for a lone kid to bully. He’d sock them a couple of times, shove them in the mud, or snatch their pants down, whichever seemed best. Joe Brown was one the smaller boys in our class, but had the advantage of having a couple of mean older brothers. He looked like a perfect target. When Robby Bobby caught Joe apart from the rest of the kids one Tuesday morning, Joe’s time had come. Robby Bobby sneaked up, snatched Joe’s cap, and punched him smartly in the kidneys. Joe didn’t know how the game was played. Instead of running off bawling, he turned and beat the phooey out of Robby Bobby. Mr. White, the principal strolled by just in time to see the whole thing. Fighting was wrong. He dragged both boys back to the classroom so we could all get the benefit of the lecture. He droned on and on before getting to the good part…….the paddling. Joe got two lackluster swats for fighting. There was no way around that. Then Joe had to answer the question, ”What did you learn today about fighting?”
Joe shuffled around and gave the stock answer. “No fighting in school, no excuses.” Joe headed for his seat so Robby Bobby could take his turn.
Mr. White gave Robby Bobby five hard swats that echoed nicely off his bony behind, pleasing the self-righteous class since most of us had suffered at his hands. We all knew Robby Bobby was in the wrong. He also had to answer the question, “What did you learn today about fighting?”
Robby Bobby looked thoughtfully from Joe Brown to Mr. White and back before replying, “Don’t pick on Joe Brown. He’s a mean little son of a bitch.”
Nutsrok 