To tell the truth I have debated with myself all week, whether I wanted to enter a story about missing a grade in school. After all, they always say, ”If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

So, after much consideration, I have finally come up with what I hope will be a summary of the events that led to this mindset.

I, like MiMi also went to school with a mean, hateful boy, that must be a prerequisite for kindergarten. The boy’s name was Charlie. The first weeks of kindergarten we all went home with black and blue chins. He was mean. It didn’t matter who you were. He would kick you in chins and spit on you, and despite the efforts of the teacher and this continued for weeks. My mom even went to the school ad demanded to know what was going. It didn’t help. He just kept kicking and spitting. My mom knew the morning I got dressed to go to school and put my cowboy boots on, that I had had enough. She fully excepted the a call from the teacher. The call never came, but needless to say our chins returned to normal, but the color of Charlie’s chins matched the black rubber of the swings.

This incident led to me having a reputation of, “Don’t mess with Kim.” I did not start any crap, but that didn’t mean I was going to take any either.

Everything went smoothly for several years, until the eight grade. Then a new girl moved to town from a big city and thought she had to throw her weight around. Everybody told her to leave me and my friends alone, but she just had to start it. Needless to say that led to a trip to the office. Blah…Blah…Blah.

Now, because of one incident, off campus, I was a trouble maker.

So, the questions I would ask in class would go unanswered and I was sent to the office. I can’t help the coach they brought in was stupid. He might have known about football, but he didn’t know shit about agriculture.

We lived several miles out in the country and my parents tried to let me play sports, but it really wasn’t practical to drive to town at 11 pm to pick me up after a ball game or something. This meant I was not on the basketball team and therefore had no future. The new teachers/coaches they hired were interested in one thing. Sports. If you weren’t on the team, you were nothing.

Now, it’s time for high school which is actually the story about missing a grade.

I can remember being excited about being able to “choose” our classes when we went high school. I dutifully checked the list and selected the things that would interest me. Science, calculus, advanced English. I am not sure why we even got to fill out the form, because what I got was basic math, basic English, and basic biology. If it was “basic” I got it. Did I mention that I was not on the basketball team?

Now, you are probably saying that a trouble maker like me didn’t have the grades for these advanced classes. I guess A’s aren’t enough if your not part of the team. If you got C’s but were on the team it was okay, because you had a future.

My dad even tried to appeal to school, but he was a ranch hand and therefore I had no future. No money for college meant; just do your time and leave.

I really can’t ever remember causing problems, just asking questions about things that we weren’t talking about at the time. No more fights, no nothing, just questions. I was an interruption to the rest of the class so therefore I was asked to sit in hall. Everyday, from class to class we would file in and get the overview of today’s basic lesson. Then, I would be asked to take my desk and sit in the hall and do my work out there.

I spent two years in that hall. Until one day I asked myself why was I even going to school at all?

© 2010, kimsworld. All rights reserved.

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Tags: basketball, high school, kindergarten, memoirs

This entry was posted on September 5, 2010 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Memoirs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.