My Bio - The Elementary Years

Mrs. Whistle was my grade 3 teacher. Once she said “bosh.” That’s a pretty funny word when you’re in grade 3. Trouble was, she said it to me. And she didn’t think it was funny. She was scolding me at the time, about the fact that I’d copied the questions on the math test. Not good. Don’t write the questions she’d said. But I guess I was confused, or distracted. I wrote the questions. And Mrs. Whistle wasn’t so happy. She was standing there yelling at me, and she said “… and you go and write all this bosh! which doesn’t make sense!… blah blah blah!…” And my friend DS whispered “bosh!” and started snickering. But I had to hold the laugh inside until it was safe.

She forgot me, Mrs. Whistle. I think she forgot everyone. Most teachers didn’t forget you, but once she’d done with you, you were history for Mrs. Whistle, and she had no recollection of you.

No so my grade 1 teacher, Mrs. UnreasonableRedhead. She got mad at me because I counted on my fingers. Once she sent me to the principal’s office.

The principal was Mrs. Perfume. She was very strict. Everyone was afraid of Mrs. Perfume. She was very thin. She had a sister who taught French in the high school. The sister was very unthin and her name was The Armoured Truck. But Mrs. Perfume was very thin.

She didn’t know why I’d been sent to her. That’s what I remember, anyway. I could be wrong. It was a very long time ago. Thing was, I hadn’t finished my arithmetic paper. That happened a lot. So finally Mrs.UnreasonableRedhead sent me off to the principal. I don’t know what she was trying to accomplish. Neither did Mrs. Perfume.

She didn’t forget me, Mrs. UnreasonableRedhead, not for years. She had a guilt complex about me. Good.

I was in the A class. Well, not in grade 1. In grade 1 it was all mixed up, while they sorted it out. Then I was in the A class grade 2 through grade 5. They had an A class, a B class, and a C class. It was all hush hush. It wasn’t on paper anywhere. Nobody talked about it. Nobody admitted it. But everyone knew it. The A class was the smart kids. The C class was the dumb kids, and the B class was the not so smart but not so dumb kids.

So I was in the A class notwithstanding my deficient mathematical skills. But then sometime before grade 6 I fell asleep. And so in grade 6 they put me in the B class and I wasn’t happy. I guess I was humiliated. What bothered me at the time was that I was leaving my friends behind. Looking back, it seems odd, that, because I’d had no friends – not really. I was more left out then not.

So there I was in grade 6, in the B class, and unhappy. I had a meeting with the principal. He assured me that I was not being demoted. He said it was a matter of space. They needed to move students around because there were too many students in the class. Funny, they chose me to move, no one else.

Academically, there was no question. I had become a hopeless screw up, daydreaming the day away and blowing all my tests, not handing things in, not doing homework etc etc.

But once I was settled, hey. I started making friends. That was new. Friends. There was Joel Beard, we were inseparable for that year. There was Jerry Hoodlum. He smoked Kools in grade 6. There was Z. A real character he was, introduced me to Hendrix and Cream. I learned cool stuff, like how to cheat on tests. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Toil. We gave her a nervous breakdown. She actually had the breakdown a few months into the next school year. But we primed her, so we get credit.

I did well in grade 6, at the beginning. The academic level was lower than what I was used to. I picked up on that right away. So I did well. Until I got involved with the aforementioned cast of characters. Then things started to slip.

There was an Israeli girl in our class. Her name was Nurit. After hearing her talk a few times I could imitate her accent exactly. So when we had a substitute I pretended that I was Israeli. Most guys around me kept a straight face while I stood up and spoke in the fake accent. But Brian KooKoo, he couldn’t stop laughing. Lucky he was facing me and not the teacher.

Mrs. Lenin was my grade 4 teacher. She said you will not remember me, or maybe you will just remember that I was the teacher who made you read. It’s true, she made us read. I read Treasure Island. Took me all year. She said “ducky.” Isn’t that just ducky, she’d say. And nix. I still say nix, and that’s why. Because my grade 4 teacher did it. The secret’s out…