Why I Was Never Teacher's Pet

So let's start by saying that I desperately wanted to go to school. I am the youngest of 4 kids and I am 5 years younger than my nearest sibling. So from as long as I can remember all my siblings got up and went to a majical place called school while I was stuck with my mother. She was not an incredibly fun person to hang out with and I desperatetly wanted to go to school with my siblings. I was all set to go to kindergarten and then my mom derailed that plan. We lived miles from pavement and so the bus stopped at the end of the dirt road and the school was a long bus ride away, we were the last stop. The school district only ran the buses twice a day so if I was going to go to kindergarten she would have had to drive to the school every day either to drop me off or to pick me up because kindergarten was a half day. She was not willing and kindergarten was not required so I didn't go.

By the time I started first grade she had left us several times, she had taken me with her and then returned me because I was too much trouble. She had never actually been wholly responsible for me, she was more of the babysitter while my siblings were at school and they were actually the ones who took care of me. I actually went to school with my sister part of the year I would have been in kindergarten because my mom was gone I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work now but my dad went to the school and explained our situation and they let me go with my sister to all of her classes in high school. So I guess my first school was my sisters high school. Everyone was really nice to me, I was kind of a mascot.

My mom came back the summer before first grade, it was a terrible summer of confrontations. She wasn't really happy to be home and we weren't exactly happy to have her there. We honestly made her miserable with childish pranks, but we were children and she was an adult I have come to realize that it was really up to her to build a healthy relationship with her children and she had most likely failed at that task before I was born. So I don't feel guilty for how we tormented her anymore. She did try to tell me one time when I was a grown up that she left because of us kids, I have now raised 4 kids of my own, I still feel that any blame is on her she was the grown up.

So by the time I started first grade to say I was not a very stable kid is maybe unnecessary. It didn't help that all the other kids had been to kindergarten so they had already had the first day of school experience. My mom was gone again and my dad had to work so my sister was going to drop me off and then go to her first day of senior year. I had a break down and she stayed with me all day long. I ended up not going to that school very long, they moved me to the one that my brother went to which was much better until my mom kidnapped me and my brother (that story is told in "Lunch With My Mom"). Then I went to another school in another town, This is pretty much the pattern of my elementary years. Highschool was my 12th school. Two times I went to 4 schools in one year. At first I was fairly traumatized by this, but eventually I found some up sides. For one nothing I did really mattered, I was going to be in a new school soon anyway. Also I could be just about anybody I wanted at a new school and could tell just about any lie I wanted about myself. It became a bit of a game to see what I could get people to believe. The answer is quite a lot.

It didn't help my behavior that school work came easy to me so I was usually bored so I looked for ways to make it fun for me, which was not always fun for my teachers. One school I went to had a movie theatre. Every Friday they showed a movie. It was a reward for good behavior if you did all your work and behaved you got popcorn and a soda, There was a demerit system, at some point you lost the popcorn then the soda and eventually you didn't get to go to the movie at all, I never saw the inside of the theatre. My crimes were mostly things like talking to my neighbor, chewing gum stuff like that, but I was a repeat offender. Especially after I discovered the joy of reading. I always had a library book and I would often misbehave just enough to get kicked out of the room then I could read my book in peace in the hallway.

I also missed out on recess often. At one school there were teachers who walked around making sure you ate all your lunch before you went to recess. I was a picky eater and a slow eater and just a stubborn kid so I immediately took offence and refused to eat all of anything so I hardly ever got to go to recess. Once I lost my recess priveledges because I led a rebellion to the rule that we couldn't go to the back of the building and play on the hill when it snowed. First I went then my friends went, then their friends and then the teacher noticed and we all got busted. Everyone else lost recess for a day or two I lost mine for two weeks. But I got a lot of time with my library books. I regret nothing.

Once my penchant for getting kicked out of class worked to my favor. My science class was working on our final project which was model rockets, we all had one that we were putting together and then we were going to go to the rodeo grounds and launch them. I was pretty excited but on this particular day I got myself kicked out of class, probably for launching pencils into the ceiling or something. Anyway I was happily in the hallway with my library book when all of a sudden kids started pouring out of the room accompanied by rather a lot of smoke. My teacher went straight to the fire alarm and then everyone was pouring out of all the classrooms and we all went out of the school. I must add that this is the only time I ever left a school with the fire alarm going off when it wasn't a drill. I found out someone had set off one of the rockets in the classroom and it was not an accident because you have to do quite a bit to make them go off so someone actually did it on purpose. I have always been a bit jealous that I wasn't the one who pulled this off. I am pretty sure who did it because we had been plotting it together. But I never told my teacher a thing, she never figured out who did it. We all had to take our rockets home that day and I don't think they ever got to do that project again. My teacher, who by the way was related to Amelia Earhart and looked a lot like her, told me that if I had not been in the hallway I would have been her prime suspect.

My freshman year of high school was probably my most misbehaved year of school, I mean isn't it for most of us? I'm going to focus on my PE class. Our teacher had just graduated from college and most of the class was senior boys who were really pretty close to her age and she tended to cater to them. The class was called Lifetime Sports and it was actually really fun. We got to go skiing and golfing and we played tennis. All of which were very fun. An average day went like this. We were told what we were going to do after our warm up. Warming up involved climbing to the top of the bleachers, climbing up a ladder to the track around the top of the gymnasium where we had to run 5 laps. If we were doing something fun that I wanted to do I ran the laps, otherwise I walked. The teacher would yell up and tell anyone not running they had to do an extra lap. I would get several laps added until eventually I was the only one and I was just walking and eventually she got busy teaching the kids on the floor and I just sat down and watched them do the stupid thing I didn't want to do.

One day I led a rebellion that I am pretty proud of to this day. We would have occasional free days wher we got to pick what to do. The boys she always catered to always wanted to play dodgeball because they loved throwing those red balls at our faces as hard as they possibly could. I hated it and so did most of the girls and some of the boys. So one day I just sat down and refused to play. She told me that if I didn't get up and go play the game I would have to get a zero for the day. That was acceptable to me so I said so and sat there. Another girl decided that deal worked for her too. Pretty soon everyone but the big jock seniors were sitting down. She was not happy but they were her rules and we just accepted them so there was nothing else she could do.

But the thing I am most proud of was a bit of a fluke. She was a bit of a ditz who was always losing her keys. So I took full advantage of that and started moving them when I saw them laying around. At first just like from her little table to the bench. One day I saw them sitting on the bench at the end of class and grabbed them on my way out and put them in her desk drawer in her office in the girls locker room and then got changed and went to my next class. I just got comfortable in my next class which was not my favorite class anyway so when the person at the door said my name and that miss G. wanted me right now I was happy to go. When I got there she was mad, She had clearly not found her keys. " Give me my keys back" was her instant demand. I replied "I don't have your keys, did you lose them again?" After a little bit of back and forth I politely asked her if she wanted me to help her look because I knew all the places she usually left them. She accepted my help and we went on a very detailed tour of everywhere she had been during our class. Surprisingly we did not find the keys for the whold period. When there was just enough time for me to get back to my class and get my stuff I asked her if she had looked in her desk. She had obviously not because that was where the keys were. So downstairs we went and low and behold her keys were right where I left them. She apologized sincerely for dragging me out of class and thanked me for helping her find them.

When it came grade time she had a very new aged approach. She took us each aside and asked us what grade we thought we had earned. Most people went for the A+ and some of them got it, I think every jock did. I went another route. I told her I figured I earned a solid C-. No debate needed and I still think I got the grade I deserved.