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When I Was Eight Years Old
by zprymantis@smilingwithteeth.com
Thinking back to who I was when I was about eight years old, that
was when I was in the third grade in a school in the suburbs of
Chicago.
I was a normal size kid for my age, if anything a little smaller
than the rest of the class because I was born in November, and
many of my classmates were born in the same year and some were
almost a year older than I was. I didn't look quite like the
rest of the kids, for some reason the area I lived in had a lot
of blond, blue-eyed children, and I had dark curly hair and brown
eyes. I always kept my hair in a ponytail so it wouldn't look
so curly.
Differences at that age were a big deal. Kids make a note of
anything "weird" about each other. Overall though, I fit in pretty
good. I wasn't real skinny like that kid Stuart was, and I wasn't
real tall like that girl Gladys. My nose wasn't always runny
like Monica, who had a steady stream of green goo constantly above
her lip and she had freckles too. I wasn't an identical twin
like Tom and John, being a twin was pretty weird. They looked
exactly the same, but I liked Tom a lot better than John, and
I could tell them apart.
Things happened that year, in the third grade, that set some
of us apart. I remember what a big deal it was the day that Tom
and John went to school, took off their jackets, and were wearing
their t-shirts. They were very embarrassed, and they had to go
home and get shirts. We were all shocked to have seen their "underware!"
A boy got bit by a dog that year, a kid that went to my school,
he wasn't in my class though. I saw him on the playground once,
everybody pointed at him. He had to get rabies shots because
they couldn't find the dog that bit him. Rabies shots is where
doctors stick needles in your stomach. I had already decided
that if I got bit by a dog, I wouldn't tell anyone. I didn't
want needles in my stomach, I would take my chances with death.
Stuart, the skinny boy, had been sitting on the counter top looking
out the window onto the playground, and when he jumped off, a
piece of metal cut his leg. There was blood and everything, and
he was crying, and our teacher was very upset and told us not
to sit on the countertop anymore.
A girl was running around the new portable building and ran right
into the corner of an open window. They were the kind of windows
that tilted out. The kids who saw it happen said she had a hole
in her forehead. They announced over the loudspeaker that we
weren't allowed to play near the building anymore.
That was the year I first got my glasses. I remember sitting
at my desk, leaning over and taking them out of the desk and pulling
them out of my red eyeglass case, and putting them on my face,
and then slowly being brave enough to sit up. I could see the
chalkboard REALLY good. The portable building had "blue" blackboards
and the teachers used yellow chalk. The older building had black
blackboards and white chalk. I remember that was really hard
to do, to put my glasses on that day.
The fifth grade teacher, Mr Silknetter, spanked kids with a paddle.
So, one day we were all in our classroom and our door was open
out into the hall, and we were doing our school work. My desk
was kind of in the middle of the room, right in front of the teacher,
facing her. There was a door leading out into the hallway on
each side of her desk in the front of the room. Behind me was
Tom and Stuart. Behind them was the countertop where Stuart got
hurt, there was a big hunk of missing trim on the countertop that
the janitor came and removed, and behind the countertop were the
windows out to the playground.
Our teacher was very pretty and young. She wasn't married yet,
so her name started with "Miss." It's hard to remember what
she looked like, but she had a nice handwriting. That day I remember
she looked very upset, just liked she looked when Stuart got hurt
on the countertop.
There was shouting out in the hall and everyone looked up from
their spelling tests. The teacher stopped reading words, and
we all listened to see if there was a fire or something. It was
Mr Silknetter's voice. He was asking some boy what he was doing
in our hallway, and I think he must have been a fifth grader.
Fifth graders weren't suppose to be in our building... neither
was Mr Silknetter, but he was. Hearing him shouting made my stomach
hurt. It made me feel like crying. I felt like I had to go pee.
I felt real excited like I wanted to run. I felt kind of sick.
Then we heard the boy crying, and Mr Silknetter yelling some more,
and then we heard the sound of a paddle spanking the boy.
We all sat there facing the teacher and she sat there looking
at us.
In two years, we were all going to be in the fifth grade, if we
passed, or didn't get hit by a car, or get rabies.
Later that year a bunch of us third graders got in trouble for
throwing dirt clogs on the playground. They announced over the
loudspeaker that we weren't allowed to play near the back of the
playground near the railroad track hill anymore. We didn't get
spanked. I was really worried when they lined us all up and wrote
down our names, that we would.
I remember one time on that playground, that it started to snow,
and the fourth and fifth graders were on their part of the playground
yelling and playing in the snow, and that there wasn't any snow
yet on our half of the playground. Then, you could watch the
snow moving across the playground! Then it was snowing on top
of us too. That was really, really neat. I will never forget
that.
I moved away that summer to Baltimore. I missed that school and
those kids and my friends, but I am glad I was never in Mr Silknetter's
class. I pretended I was in Mr Silknetters class sometimes, when
I was alone in my room, or under the covers at night. I still
do.
© 2004 by zprymantis@smilingwithteeth.com, not to be reposted or distributed
without permission
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