Back to School

Vomiting Through School

School is back in session. Did you hear a big halleluiah? If so, that was me rejoicing my escape from educational bondage over twenty-three years ago.

I can remember looking out the window at the beginning of the second grade counting up how many years I had left of compulsory public school education and about to make myself cry. These days I could go to the school nurse for something nice like Paxil, or Xanax, or Zoloft to take my mind off my troubles and reduce my stress. Since this was the sixties and the authorities frowned on dispensing under-the-counter drugs, my only bodily defense was to toss my cookies. I did that a lot in the second grade.

My teacher was a Mrs. Harpy. Mrs. Harpy loved to say that we would thank her for what she did to us one day. I would like to think Mrs. Harpy has taken up residence in hell, but, things being as they are, she's probably in charge.

The first time I threw up was when she snatched up my across the aisle neighbor, Brad and beat the heck out of him with a paddle ball paddle with the staple still in it where the rubberized string was supposed to go. I thought I was next because I wasn’t doing anything wrong at the time and neither was Brad. The adrenaline shooting through my system couldn’t make me fight or take flight so it did the next best thing – it made me toss my cookies all over Mrs. Harpy’s stockings. I got to go home. Brad didn’t get hit anymore that year and he gave me his ice cream once as a way of saying thanks.

The second time was when I forgot to do a homework assignment and Mrs. Harpy shouted at me. Mrs. Harpy began to hate me because I was cramping her style. What’s the fun having 32 little children deathly afraid of you when the result is cleaning up some little kid’s bile from the floor?

My mother took to thinking that I was a nervous child, but she had it wrong. I was a gullible child who believed the stuff my mother told me. Stuff like the boogey man coming to get bad little children, and that my face would freeze like that one day, and that she was going to chop off my wee-wee with a butcher knife if I kept pulling it out to look at it.

My picture from the first grade is of a stranger with his face contorted in fear. My picture from the second grade is of a happy child in charge of his world. Come on teacher, make my day… RAWLPH!

My First Spanking

My family moved to another town, a much smaller town, so deep into South Georgia that it was almost to Florida and nearby to Alabama.  Colquitt, Georgia is the archetypical, brutal southern town that you read about in literature.  Our rental house was located at the intersection with the only red light.  The red night was like us, new to town, and got just as much respect.  The locals did not know what to do with this Cyclops and the scene was regularly visited with the squealing sound of brakes and the smell of burnt rubber and the crash and tingle of collisions.

The school system was also a wreak.  They did not have Alice and Jerry reads, had never heard of the SRA system, and thought new math was a northern conspiracy on a par with segregation. They did old math.  The Lord only knows what educational travesty was visited on the poor black school.

Being the newest kid in town, I was plopped into a class run by a vicious, ignorant sadist called by her first and last names and an unearned honorific--  Mrs. Niza Lee.    Mrs. Niza Lee was determined to undo the learning that had been given me by those communists who lived in the North -- my northern South Georgia town of Jesup.  I did division the new way, with the numbers running down in a column on the right hand side.  Here is how it looked.

    _____
4 | 2682|
              |600
              |  70
              |    2
              |672

My first math paper in her class was a zero even though all the answers were correct.  I protested.  That put me on her list.  I was soon making straight C's in every subject as she picked apart my papers.  My parents refused to go to bat for me and, instead, launched on a tearful program of tutoring me in old math.

The only salvation in all of this mess was public speaking.  You got extra credit if you choose to speak on a subject during Friday's section on speech.  As the grade was given out loud at the end of the speech, I worked hard at crowd pleasing, funny, talks and even Mrs. Niza Lee had to give me my credit when I sat down to applause.  But she found other ways to get even.

At break time each morning, those who wished could go to the lunchroom to buy milk.  About six of us would walk together each morning for our milk and then walk down the cool concrete corridors sipping on our cartons.  One morning, Ernie was taking a sip while walking down some steps, missed a step and fell back.  A long delicious column of white rose from his carton and, nearly in slow motion, fell to splash on his face.  We convulsed, big time, and my laugh was the loudest of all.  I turned the corner, giggling, only to be met by Mrs. Niza Lee and her paddle.

"Pat Pat Pat" went the paddle on my behind.  Really.  It was a little paddle just like Mrs. Harpy's and it landed with soft little pats on my behind.  If I had not been so shocked, I would have laughed at her.  I had been spanked at school.  I had never been spanked at school.   I walked into class to see my classmates scrambling for their desks in fear and I joined them with my face red with shame. We heard screams down the hall as Mrs. Niza Lee whaled into poor Richard for the mortal sin of being unable to walk and drink milk at the same time.  His was no pat-pat and the other four suffered the same.

"If you ever get spanked at school, you will get a spanking when you get home," my father's word's echoed in my mind.  My bottom shrank up somewhere into the neighborhood of my pancreas in fear.  Daddy's belt did not go "pat pat pat".

Mrs. Niza Lee came back into class with a stern look she was using to hide the obvious joy she felt at her orgy of spanking.  Six people in one swoop.  She looked hard at me.

"You are the funny guy. You think everything is funny.  You will not speak at extra credit for the next two weeks."

My mother agreed later not to tell my father and my plummet back into the realm of gentlemen's C's went unremarked.

At the end of the school year, my father got a promotion and we moved away to a more progressive small town that was just starting to learn new math.  I knew more than the teacher and she was grateful for the help.  Because of my poor grades in Colquitt, I was placed in the "slow" class and had a very easy year of straight A's.

In college, I met some of my former classmates and they were amazed to see me.  I had tried so hard to wipe Colquitt from my life that I had dropped all contact with my friends once I left.  It turns out that my best friend there (who ran off to live in San Francisco as soon as he was able) told everyone that I must have been a space alien who visited us for only one year.

Because of their wonderful education, they had believed him.  All four of these girls were going to be teachers, "Just Like Mrs. Niza Lee".  I avoided them from that day foreward.

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