Life Lessons from Lower Grade School

Perhaps the first but not the most important lesson that I learned in grade school was that each teacher had one of three first names: Mr., Mrs., or Miss. Mr. was easy enough but the other two could be a little confusing. The most important lesson was that my sister was going to be a hard act to follow. To provide a sense of order in this epistle, I will break the lessons down by the grade at Central Ward School.

First Grade: “Never day dream when you are taking a test”. Early on in the year our teacher gave us a test that contained two parts. The test was easy enough and I quickly went through the first section. Suddenly my mind took me outside to get on the worlds tallest slide and begin the exciting ride down as you could hear the metal in the slide moan and groan as you traveled with increasing speed towards earth. Needless to say, the time for the test was up before I finished my own recess. Since we lived in a small town where everybody knew everybody my teacher called my mother and said that this was performance was so unlike Tommy’s usual work but since she felt so bad about giving me a F perhaps I could retake the test during the next recess. That seemed more than reasonable to me so the next day I stayed in during the recess period ready to take the exam. This time to ensure that I completed the test, I started with the second part first. Unfortunately, our classroom had big windows that looked out on the playground and I could see all of my friends having a wonderful time. Again, my mind played tricks on me and as soon as the recess was over the teacher collected my test before I had a chance to finish. This time she called my Dad at the power plant where he was the City Engineer. The recess retake was again offered but she said that she hoped that Dad would find some way for Tommy to keep his mind focused. Since Dad always felt a need to explain why he was going to spank me, the speech was rather short this time when he told me to never day dream when taking a test. Contrary to a popular myth, I do believe that it hurt me more than it hurt him. The good news is that it worked and I was able to move on to the second grade.

Second grade: “When you start something, you finish it”. Grade school can become such a drag. This is especially true when you have big plans and the drudgery of day to day work on things like the alphabet, addition, subtraction and who know what else gets in the way. The day came in March that I had taken all that I could, so I told all of my friends that I would be going home at noon for lunch and that I wouldn’t be back. Good luck, so long, farewell and some foreign phase that never made much sense. Lunch at our house was a production. My mother would prepare a three-course All-American meal that included meat, potatoes and a vegetable of some kind. Likewise, she would have prepared a dessert. Dad would drive home for lunch and Linda and I would walk home from school. I can count on both hands the number of times that I ate at the school cafeteria. Strangely enough I looked at that as a treat but my classmates who dined there everyday would disagree. Back to the story. Halfway through the meal I announced that today was my final day at school. My mother promptly said that it wasn’t. This went back and forth a few times until Dad failed to see the humor and simply announced that we didn’t quit things, we finished them. Swallowing hard I could see that I was defeated but now I had to figure out something to say to my classmates when I got back to school. Of course, telling the truth would have been the correct course but it is so much easier to create a believable but unconfirmable lie. So by the time we went back to class, everybody in my circle of friends felt really sorry for my poor mother who had broken down in tears over the possibility that my life would go down the drain like an uncle who had not finished the second grade.

Third grade: “When you know something it may be best not to be a public-address system”. This was the final year of the lower section of grade school. We were the lords of our section of the playground and sacks of marbles measured our wealth. Once in awhile we would have homework but generally everything was accomplished within the regular school day. We had an arithmetic workbook and one day we were told to take the workbook home and complete an assignment for the next day. After supper that evening I felt rather grown up because I had homework just like my 6^th grader sister. After I finished the task I started looking at the workbook in greater detail only to discover that in the back of the book were sample tests that the students could take. There were two problems with that discovery. First, in addition to the tests there was an answer section and second, when I examined the sample tests they looked exactly like the tests we had been given in class. Looking back, I know that the correct thing to do would have included going to the teacher and pointing out my accidental discovery. However, I am a sinner and if you aren’t, cast the first stone. I couldn’t wait to get to school to share my wonderful discovery with EVERYONE in the entire class. Needless to say, the chicken came home to roost. On the next arithmetic test almost every person scored a 100. You could tell something was wrong when we came into the classroom the next morning. The teacher looked so ticked off. The first thing she wanted to know was how could all of her students could do so well on a test? I could have answered that, but I opted to keep my mouth shut. However, one of my classmates was quick to point out that Tommy had shown her the answers in the back of the workbook and that she felt really bad about it. My, my how the tide can turn. Just 24 hours ago she had told me that I was a hero. Well the wrath of the teacher soon followed. She went by every desk in the room and tore out the sample tests and answer sheets. She threw out the results of the test from the previous day and made us take another test. Since it was handwritten I can only assume that the hand of an angered woman wrote it. Even though things remained tense for a period, it did smooth out as we worked to move on to the 4^th grade. I think the incident helped me formulate my opinion about entrapment.