School Days - A Distant Memory

Now that school is out for the summer, it's time for a little reminiscing.

If only I had paid attention when the teacher was lecturing about writing and diagramming English! I wonder if they still teach English that way - diagramming. I was pretty good at it, not getting too many words in the wrong place, at least I like to think I was. At least I earned a passing grade, or was that the one where the teacher gave me a "D?" All through high school, that was the only D I received, but I can't remember if it was an English D or a Physics D or a Geometry D or a History D or a Disciplinary D. It couldn't be the latter. I was a very well-behaved student, only getting knocked out of my seat once by a teacher. If he hadn't been so tricky about it, he never would have done that, pretending to be my friend and wanting to sit next to me at the desk and whoosh! I found myself sitting on the floor. I jumped up and was going to return the favor, but he moved as I attempted it, the chicken.

It wasn't like I had been disrupting the class, I hadn't. I was just my usual high school moronish self, yelling at my friends, laughing, and joking, but he didn't understand. He wanted to get on with the class and thought that I was interfering. I wasn't. All he had to do was yell louder than me and get the class's attention, after all, I was only in his class because they told me I had to be there. Didn't they know I already had enough credits to graduate and I would rather be somewhere else than making a fool of myself in his classroom?

If only I had paid attention!

Knocking me out of my seat didn't do anything toward getting my attention, either. I wanted REVENGE and by golly gumstump, I was going to get it, too! All of the teachers had a personal vendetta against me. Why? It couldn't be that I instigated a lot of the mischief, like erasing the blackboards with the lessons on them, or playing shuffleboard on the window sills with the erasers and laughing like a crazy person when I won a point, or whisper a joke to a friend that everyone heard. Or signing up for the music class when I couldn't play a lick of anything. Hell, they left me in the class playing the tuba for three months before they found I was tone deaf. That was the reason I never played a note in the right place or time. Their version of music was just a little different than mine, that was all. I always liked the sound of the tuba though, WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP! it went, always when the tune hit a nice quiet frotunda or whatever WHUMP! when they least expected it. Crimany, what did they expect, a Leonard Bernstein or what? Lawrence Welk?

I got my REVENGE, though, by graduating as Valedictorian of the class of 1950. Well almost, I wasn't actually the Valedictorian, but I got to sit on the stage with the girl who was, along with 108 other students.

If only I had paid attention!

This is written in the memory of an old high school buddy who passed away last week. We had some great times getting through the fifth through twelfth grades together, not counting all the mischief that happened to transpire. May he rest in peace!