A PERSONAL NEW MEXICO HISTORY
PAGE ONE
ENTRY: First Day of School...September , 1952....a Monday.
Today I get to start school......for
the first time. I'm six years old.
Last year I was five, I think, and I got a Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox for
my birthday. Mom made me take my marble collection out of it yesterday,
so she could clean it and pack my lunch. That got me p.o.ed (don't tell
anyone I said that.....I'm not supposed to even use the abbreviation. )
Anyway, that should have been an indication right then and there that school
was going to come between me and my favorite pastime of getting my own
way.
We say goodbye to the dog, Pal, and get into the car--a new, off-white '53 Chevy. We pull out of our dirt driveway, along our dirt yard, and onto the dirt street. This is the reason for the off-white car. As we drive along, mom's fumbling around trying to locate a bothersome rattle in the dashboard area, and before I can tell her not to open the glove compartment.....she does, and out comes my marble collection. Now she's p.o.ed, I'm p.o.ed, and we're off to a really great start.
We arrive at the school. Kids
are everywhere. Moms are everywhere. We were here last week for something
called red stration. It was fun. My teacher is a real nice lady with a
funny name, Miss Coffee. All us kids giggle whenever her name is mentioned
but we do it as quietly as possible. We know how to be polite. The other
teacher's name is Mrs. Pigpen...oops...Mrs. Thigpen. Good thing I didn't
get her; I'd slip for sure.
Oh yeah, there's one more first-grade teacher named Mrs. Shockley. There's
nothing particularly interesting about her name or about her little girl,
Phyllis, who is in the fifth grade and wears glasses. (foreshadowing
of ironic things to come)
There are five kids that I already
know in Miss Coffee's room:
Bruce Dyer, Judy Goedeke, Lynn Knight, Rudy Rogers, and
Cheryl Lynn Stanley. There are twenty-five in the room,
all together. We're having a perfectly good time when I begin to notice
that all the moms are leaving. I guess it's time to go, so I get up from
my desk and follow my mom. She seems displeased. To my dying day I will
hear those astonishing words echoing in my head, " No, Jalfalfa, You're
staying here......I'm going home."
"Like Hell !" Of course,
I didn't actually say that to her out loud, but she got the idea. I made
sure she got the idea. Well, to shorten this story, the next few days had
their ups and downs.
Ups.....when I would turn around to check and my mom would be seated, but
not smiling, in the little desk at the back of the room that Miss coffee
had prepared for her. Downs.....when I would turn and see an empty desk.
I tried not to be too vocal about it.
I just quietly sobbed, hour after hour, for days.
This apparantly caused the little
girl directly behind me a great deal of concern, 'cause she periodically
would tap me on the shoulder and whisper, "Boy, Why are you crying?"
She had the cutest smile in the whole world, and her name was Cheryl Reid.
I didn't have an answer for her. I only knew that I couldn't help it; but
thanks to her and all the others the problem eventually resolved itself.
And after all the anguish, all
the tears and embarrassment, I learned to rationalize away my behavior
to the point where I could feel very good about myself. And I did this
in the time-honored, traditional way of all mankind......by gloating over
the fact that there was another boy in that classroom whose behavior was
even worse than mine.
(nope...no names...only those present on that first day in Miss Coffee's
room will know)
I may have bawled like a baby for a week,
but I can console myself with the fact that
at least I didn't kick the teacher and run.
(Copyright 1998, by Jalfalfa)