School Days--Eddie

 School Days is a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here is Today's Story

Eddie started kindergarten in 1988 when he was almost five years old. His school was in suburban Maryland.

What do you remember about starting school?

I remember that Mrs.Gnu was my teacher for kindergarten. She was nice enough, but she acted like she didn't want to deal with kids, especially me.

Why do you say that?

Maybe because we were hard to deal with.

We had a coloring book on dinosaurs to color and I didn't want to do it. Coloring was not my thing. I colored all of the pictures gray and didn't worry that I was outside the lines. She asked me why I did that because the dinosaurs were different colors. I replied, “You should know. You are old enough to have been there.”

Another time I watched one kid dump an entire bottle of Elmer's glue on another kid's head.

Were you one of those kids?

No, but the two kids involved later lived together.

What do you remember about first grade?

Mrs. Bee was my teacher and was frustrated with me. I wasn't catching onto spelling and although I could read, I didn't want to read what they had at school. One day, she was exasperated with me and said, “Why aren't you getting it? Are you stupid?”

That's awful.

Yes it was. It was the first time I wanted to hit an adult. The interesting thing is that she was my mentor in middle school to help me be organized.

Can you tell me a good memory from elementary school?

My second grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson was very nice, but I really enjoyed fifth grade. I don't remember what I learned, so there must not have been too many problems in that area. Mr. Shraffe was my teacher and he was a lot of fun. He was a good story teller and sometimes he would end the day with a game or a magic trick. He brought his laser disc player to school and showed us Billy Joel's music video of We Didn't Start the Fire. We studied history that way.

Thanks for sharing your memories. I hope we can hear more stories another time.