THE THIRD GRADE

     I entered the third grade in the fall of 1958 at Bryant Elementary School…my third school in three years.  We had just moved to north Wood Street in Sherman and the school was less than 100 yards away.  Bryant also was the school for some of the disabled and Down Syndrome children.  This proved to be a blessing, as I got a first hand look as to how these kids dealt with life.  These youngsters were challenged, but they were happy, enjoyed life and as we interacted with them, I came to realize they were not to be pitied.

     Our school had a bit of an elevated setting, with a chainlink fence around a portion of the playground.   The older children would show us the fence, which had yellow and white bird poop on the sharp wire at the top.  They convinced me this was the result of children attempting to climb over the fence, falling and impaling their eye on the exposed points.  This horrified me, until I realized I did not see any one-eyed kids at school, much less the dozens it would take to account for so much “eyeball” evidence .

     Bryant Elementary felt smaller than my 2nd grade school and our class was on the 2nd floor.  I felt like we were a big deal by being on an upper floor.  My teacher was a sweet little lady, Mrs. Dodd,  barely taller than us and I never saw her perturbed or angry.  She would pat us on the back, encourage us and seemed anxious for us to learn and grow.    

     This year, we began using a fountain pen.  The pen had a lever on the side that one used to draw the ink into the pen.  

     One day I was filling my pen from a freshly opened ink bottle and a fellow “outlaw” named Bobby Wylie said he would give me a quarter if I drank the ink.  He produced the quarter, I took it and drank the ink.  He burst out laughing, Mrs. Dodd hushed him without looking up and we returned to our seats.    He immediately told those around him what I had done and the class grew all atwitter.  

     At that moment, a girl had gone to fill her pen, looked at the new ink bottle and told Mrs. Dodd it was empty.  Mrs. Dodd looked at the bottle, did not see how this was possible and looked out upon the 20 students before her.  When her eyes locked onto me, with black lips, mouth, gums and teeth, she appeared to be stunned.  She asked me to come with her into the hall, looked into my eyes and only asked if I felt OK.  

     I said I was fine, she knew where I lived and suggested I go home.  She went to the office, called my mother and explained that she felt with my blackened mouth I would create too much of a distraction to remain in class.  

     Mom was waiting in the yard when I showed up, got me into the house and produced a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.  I scrubbed, gargled and swished this in my mouth and across my lips for an extended period and the ink began to slowly fade.  I felt bad because my mother would alternatively weep, yell, go silent or simply shake her head, while looking at me intensely with buggy eyes.  She appeared to be going crazy and it was my fault…all for a quarter.    

     When my father got home, he yelled at me, called me a bunch of names and threatened to pull me out of school and put me to work digging ditches.    (Anytime in my life I did something that did not meet his expectations, he was going to set me to work digging ditches.)  I reasoned since I was only 7,  I would make a pretty poor ditch digger.  Plus, they had already told me it was the law I had to attend school, so I figured he was bluffing.  I didn’t get beaten, but my mother’s behavior saddened me and I assured them both I would walk the straight and narrow for the rest of my life.

     When I turned eight in December of that year, my mother baked my favorite chocolate cake and dad spent the time to break up a big stick of peppermint and fix it to the side of the cake in the icing.  I could not believe my father would spend the time on a project of this nature on my behalf.  I was so touched, I almost wept with gratitude.  It was a great cake and my gift was a cub scout uniform.     

     You had to be eight to join the cub scouts and I joined a den just down the street with a lot of kids I knew.  I saw photographs of cub scouts with pocket knives and assumed I would receive one from the den leader.  I also assumed I would be able to carry a pistol, since I had a uniform and somehow thought we were a junior branch of law enforcement.  This turned out not to be the case…no gun, no knife.  As a cub scout I would have to fight injustice with my bare hands, but at least I had a uniform and wore it to school every chance I got.

     I enjoyed scouting immensely and attempted to earn as many badges and pins as I could.  We marched in uniform in parades and attended special events in Sherman.  Eventually my mother became our den mother and really did a great job.  In retrospect, I realize she likely volunteered to keep me under a watchful eye and to prevent me from repeat stunts, such as the ink well episode.  These seemed funny at the time, but later I realized they led to nothing but explosive parental backlash and I would come to regret each stunt.