As I mentioned before, I attended the small units associated with our elementary school just around the corner from my house. My second grade teacher and my mom agreed that I should be promoted from second to fourth grade since I had completed the third grade work. This was exciting but also a bit scary at the same time.
The morning of my first day of fourth grade, my mom informed me that she would be driving me to school. I wasn’t having any of that. I argued probably more than I should have been allowed to. My logic was that I had been walking to school for two years on my own, why should I be driven now? My mom was considering the new quarter mile distance as well as the five lane road I would need to cross without the aid of a crossing guard.
I’m fuzzy on how it all went down, but I seem to remember walking to school and then hearing a car behind me. I turned around to find that I was being tailed by my mom. What cool, self respecting nine year old allows his mother to take him to school? I confronted her right there on the street. I have no other memories beyond this moment in the interaction. It may be because I was concussed after arguing so disrespectfully with my mother. I’m not sure how I lived through my childhood years seeing how unabashedly independent I was.
I made my way down Dexter Avenue until I reached Longway Park. Those of us who walked to school would cut diagonally across the field comprised of baseball diamonds, football fields and tennis courts. This brought us to the south entrances of the school. The school day started at 9:00 AM and the doors would remain chained until just before then. It seemed to me as though there were thousands of kids swarming the doors. One thing I hadn’t considered in skipping a grade was that I would be a year behind everyone in size. Sure, the education and maturity were there, but I was shorter and smaller than everyone else. That first morning, I was discovered by a set of twins named Lynn and Lydia. They found me and my fear must have been apparent. They asked me who I was and where my home room would be and promised to get me there safe. It was a good thing too, because when those doors were unchained it was like a Who concert. You don’t forget kindnesses like that.
It was a bit unnerving having left my friends behind and moving into a room full of strangers. My teacher for the year didn’t help much either. She was an older lady who should have retired long before I met her. She was mean and had little patience for us. She was short with cat eye glasses. Aside from her daily screaming, I recall her picking a boy up by a single arm and paddling him right in front of the entire class. Paddling was commonplace at this time, but it was done with a certain protocol. The teacher would take the student to the hall, have the student bend at the waist and then administer three swats in the presence of another teacher as witness. This lady did none of those things. She jerked him up by one arm and paddled him in front of us all. Half of the class stood there mouths agape while the others were organizing a protest on the basis of a violation of rights. What else could be expected from the children of union men and women? If memory serves me right, Mr. Schnell, a large German man that taught across the hall, burst in and saved this young man from his punishment.
At our school, we stuck with one teacher for most of the day only occasionally venturing to another teacher’s room. Once in a while, we would go and see Mr. Mashni, an Arabic teacher, for some math. Mr. Schnell would have us over and play classical music on a record player while we worked. We had French once a week. I was disappointed the first day when our teacher went through the room telling us what our names were in French. Mine was still Joel, just pronounced with a French accent.
Once the school year was into a rhythm, the guys in my class would bring a football to play with before school and during lunch. We would either divide up into even teams or play smear the queer (different times folks). Being physically smaller made it a challenge for me, but I did all right. Every day I packed a peanut butter sandwich, a baggie of Doritos and a Little Debbie nutty bar. The faster you ate, the sooner you got to go outside for recess. I would eat my nutty bars, put my Doritos in my coat pocket and wad my sandwich up into a ball and throw into in the trash. It made this great thump when it hit the bottom. I would say I have thrown away hundreds, maybe thousands of peanut butter sandwiches in my time.
I started out with a cool, metal Star Wars lunch box with Darth Vader on it. I would sit it by the door I used to go back to class after recess. One sunny day as I approached the door, there was a sixth grader named Jimmy Slaughter who was about twenty yards in front of me. When he got to the door, he jumped up with both feet and slammed down on top of my lunch box. I’ve been trying to avoid using names, but with a cool one like Jimmy Slaughter, how can you not? As I approached it and studied its flatness, all I could think was, “That’s a shame.” I just walked on past and left it there. After all, who wants to be the kid carrying a flattened lunch box. Brown bags for me after that day.
Fifth grade was better because I was a bit of a teacher’s pet. Mrs. Greer loved me. She was a short lady with similarly short afro. Her class was across from Mrs. Wood’s and our classes went to gym together. One gym period, our class was playing dodgeball against Mrs. Wood’s. Yet another game in which I was outsized. I was always looking for a way to get some respect and this day, I thought I had found one. The biggest boy in Mrs. Woods class was not looking in my direction and I had a ball. I whizzed it in his direction and hit him square in the side of the head. I heard that distinctive sound made by those red playground balls and then watched as this boy stared dead into my eyes with fury. In a millisecond, I went from feeling like a hero to fearing for my very life. I hadn’t realized it, but he was already out of the game and was making his way off the floor. Like a scene from an old western, every kid ran to the side of the gym leaving me and my nemesis alone staring each other down. I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move. He slowly marched toward me while Mrs. Greer and Mrs. Wood were running in slow motion toward us saying, “Nooooooo. Stoooooppppp.” He shoved me with both arms until my back hit the folded up bleachers. I seem to feel like my feet even left the floor as I flew through the air but I’m not quite sure.
About two weeks later, Mrs. Greer informed me that I would be going to Mrs. Woods for English from now on. It seems I was being promoted yet again at least for English. I begged and pleaded for her to keep me back knowing what I had to face in her class. Nonetheless, she escorted me over. Mrs. Wood didn’t have individual desks, but rectangular tables for two. There was only one seat available in the entire class. It was at a table with my dodgeball friend. As I took my seat, he looked at me, then smiled and said hi. Maybe the blow from the dodgeball had caused him to forget who I was. All was well.
Sixth grade found me with Mr. Bach. A pretty uneventful year except for the time he lost his temper and cussed us all out. He was a good man, just had had enough of us that day. It was also the year I would start making a fool of myself pursuing girls. I had always noticed them, but from a distance. Now I would begin humiliating myself. Oh man.
Joel Stiff's Adventure 