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.
