This is a story I wrote sometimes back and
only shared it on my BlogSpot. It is mostly told as it happened and
as best I remember it…..which may be somewhat distorted from the expansive
distance of time and poor memory.
Talking Back
This is a short chronicle
of my opening few days in the first grade at the local elementary school where
I first went when I started school. The name of the school was Highlands
Elementary. It was a manila colored edifice that sat on a small rise in the
area that was our neighborhood. It was surrounded by large fields, mostly dirt
but in spots invested with clover, Bermuda grass and assorted weeds. There was
an overabundance of tiny red oval iron filled rocks mixed liberally with yellow
dirt. The intermittent swing set, merry go rounds and rusted slides
spotted the field all ancient by the time I arrived for my first day there.
The year was 1949. I was
five years old, and the youngest in a family that had four sons, no daughters.
Mother had always wanted a girl, which is understandable with three boys (hard
tails as we were referred to) already in house. In anticipation of my birth she
had picked out several names she liked, being so sure that I would be a girl.
Rosemary was the one she most favored. Had I been a girl I would have surely
gone through life with that name. Daddy however had other ideas. He was a
staunch Republican and wanted to honor Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker, who
were running as the republican nominees for president and vice-president in the
1944 Presidential Election. Daddy was certain they would win in a landslide. He
was going to name me John Dewey Daughtry but lucky for me Mother knew that the
town idiot was also named John Dewey, so she vetoed that name. Determined,
Daddy chose my moniker from this same pair of losers and had it on my birth
certificate before Mother got out of the delivery room. I have often wondered
if Daddy had been a Democrat, would my name have been, Franklin Truman
Daughtry, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman as they were the
nominees from the Democratic Party who eventually won the election.
The
First Day
So there I was in
the sixth year of my life and in the first grade. My birthday was in November
but I was allowed to enter school, even though I didn’t turn six until
the 22nd of November. This turned out not to be such a great idea.
Mother and Daddy had not bothered to teach me very much such as how to
spell my last name, where I lived, what my phone number was or even how to wipe
my own ass. I put this off until the first grade because I had a nanny that did
everything for me including the wiping business. All of that seemed a somewhat
nasty business and I wanted no part of it. When the first grade teacher
realized I didn't have any of those vital pieces of information she assumed,
(rightly so) that I was mildly to severely retarded. There was really nothing
much I could do when she said “Write your first and last name on your paper”. I
frantically looked around at the other children quietly doing what they were
told and hoped to see one of them writing down their last name thinking that
perhaps I could just copy what they wrote. Who knew you had to know things
before you went to primary school, certainly not me.
Quickly it became
apparent that none of the children sitting close enough for me to copy were
going to write my last name. Even at that early age I had few qualms about
cheating! This was the first time I realized how much my experiences in
education were going to suck. Later this would become more and more evident.
Being the shrewd little boy that I was I simply copied down onto my paper what
the neighboring student had written on her paper. The teacher then said, “Write
your phone number and your address too”; which I suppose is common information
for most first graders. I knew nothing! The last name I copied from my
neighbor’s paper and the address from the little boy on the other side, as
though it were mine. Yipes! I didn't know diddly squat! Later that day the
teacher asked why it was that I lived with Rosalind when we had different last
names. Not knowing what to say I told her that my parents were dead. She said
that she thought my last name was Daughtry, I said it was before they died.
This little piece of deception went along quite well until later that day when
my mother came by to pick me up for lunch. You might say that the manure
finally hit the proverbial fan right then and there. Mother was embarrassed
because of what all I didn't know (there really was a whole lot) and I am positive,
not quite sure how to cover up the fact that she had not taught me anything.
Later that day when I got home after school, mother sat me down determined to
teach, in one afternoon what she hadn't bothered to teach me in the first five
or so years of my life. In all fairness to her she had a busy schedule of going
for Coca Colas with her cousin, Mary Lou in the afternoons. After all I was the
fourth boy and she had really wanted a girl. Not to mention she also ran a
house full of boys who were hungry all the time and usually up to something
that she had to ferret out with little help from my father.
The Second Day
The second day of the
first grade I decided that I would just not go back to school any more. I
rolled myself in the blanket at the end of my bed and went back to sleep.
Somewhere around 11:00 my nanny found me when she came to make up the bed. More
problems! Mother took me back to school after a pretty good thrashing,
apologizing to the teacher who at this point was a pretty confused woman.
Things did not improve in the coming days.
The Third Day
The third day of school I
brought what we called a “log Roller” marble to class. It was the most
beautiful thing I had ever owned, a clear perfectly round red crystal circle an
inch in diameter. To clean it and it always needed cleaning I put it into my
mouth and swished it around and then dried it off on my shirt. This third day
of the first grade however the marble, for some reason escaped the sucking grip
of my tongue and slipped to the back of my throat just down into my wind pipe.
What followed was even more embarrassing. My face, being deprived of oxygen
began to turn blue and I had a desperate and panicked look on my face. The
teacher leaped up from her desk and raced down the aisle towards me. As you
might imagine this caused me even more distress and I swallowed really hard.
The Marble was lodged blocking my windpipe and all air ceased to pass. It was
inaccessible, well beyond the reach of my tongue or fingers! I began to make
strange little involuntary sounds when I tried to explain what was wrong, it
sounded like eerhrg and geeeakh! The teacher seemed to be in even more distress
than I was and that was a lot! Thank goodness she had the presence of mind to
whack me in the middle of my back. The marble was dislodged and went, I knew
not where but I am pretty sure I swallowed it. The emergency was over. She
wanted me to explain what had happened so I hunched my shoulders up and down a
few times and turned my palms towards the ceiling raising my eyebrows as
if to say, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!” She had a resigned look
on her face and wandered back up to her desk. For many weeks I continued to
look for my crystal log Roller but it never showed up. Can’t tell you how many
times I tried to cough it up. I loved that marble!
The Fourth Day
The fourth day I
awoke after my near death experience of the previous day, determined to do
better at school. Wrong! The next day just after lunch a little girl named
Camille threw up her lunch right in the middle of the aisle in the middle of
class. I was in clear line of site when it happened and had an up close and
personal view of the entire mess. There were partial diminutive pieces of
Tangerine suspended in the mess and my stomach began to churn and feel very
strange. I thought I too was going to throw up. I didn't but the little girl
who sat just next to the spot where the puddle occurred began to heave and she
too emptied the multihued contents of her stomach on to the floor beside the
other. More tangerines! The teacher seemed to have lost her composure to say
the least and took the rest of the class rapidly out on to the playground for
an unscheduled recess. Arriving back to the room the janitor had carefully
removed the tangerines and the rest of the unspeakable mess. We began again.
One of the children in the class raised her hand and said that she had to go to
the restroom, then another and then another. The teacher had about had it at
this point (this was not one of her better days) and loudly exclaimed that the
next person that asked to go to the restroom was instead going to the
Principal’s office. Well, that let me out of asking even though it felt
as though my bladder would explode. My penis (though I had no idea what it was
called in the first grade) had gotten so hard that the front of my pants stood
out and looked really weird and I knew that if I stood up to leave the room all
the other children would see my predicament! No pun intended! I began to panic!
In a foolish act of desperation I pulled my wooden color crayon box out of my
desk and pretended to be looking for something therein. Luckily I had on shorts
and I placed the crayon box between my legs. I twisted my penis down to where I
had a pretty good shot at hitting the box with the urine. It worked and my
bladder now 20 percent less filled was slightly better, however crayon boxes
really do not hold a lot of urine especially when they are so filled with
crayons. Who knew that crayon boxes wouldn't hold liquids? Well, the
urine began to seep out of the box. It ran down my legs and briefly pooled
beneath my desk. Lo and behold it then began to migrate ever so slowly up
the aisle towards the teacher’s desk. Crap! Then it happened. I got tickled at
my impossible situation and try as I might I was unable to hold the remaining
urine. I just let it go. And go it did! My pants were soaked and the urine
trail began to travel at what appeared to be a north easterly direction about
twelve miles an hour directly up towards the teacher’s desk. Everyone in the
class realized what was going on except the teacher. They stared directly at
the slow trickling golden liquid path that meandered up the rough wooden aisle
ever so slowly. As unbelievable as it now seems not one child said a word, no
squeals, no laughter only dead silence. It was as though they were transfixed,
hypnotized by the liquid as it gathered momentum headed up the aisle. To me it
looked like a tsunami headed for the front of the room! The teacher finally
noticed and scrambling quickly took the class out for yet another recess. Except
for me, I was walked to the principal’s office and promptly sent home. I got to
go home for the rest of the day. Luckily this was the first grade and I was not
arrested as I was almost positive I would be. Being so embarrassed about my
inability to control my bladder in school I took my short pants, my underwear
and the pair of urine soaked socks and stuffed them down into the unfinished
wall in the bedroom closet of my room. They remained there for the entire time
my parents owned the house. There is no doubt that they are still wadded
secretly in that dark space bearing silent testimony to my weakness.
