STORY Monday August 6, 2007

Coming out of the Doctors waiting room last week I saw and spoke to the best schoolteacher I ever had. After coming home I have spent lots of time thinking about my teachers at Ogden. The worst, meanest most horrible teacher came to mind. She would paddle, thump your head, pull your hair and just any other kind of punishment known to exist. One day she was reading “Bambi´ to us for about the tenth time and me and two classmates a boy and a girl were playing tic tac toe on my desk because it was in the middle. One of the classmates was a girl and one a boy. The boy has passed away but the girl is still with us and should remember this situation well. I had gotten a small sling shot out of a “Guess What” candy box and had a BB out with it playing with them between times I would mark my square. The boy dared me to shoot Miss Reagan with a BB. I told both they would tell on me. Then the girl double dog dared me and swore she would not tell on me. The windows were up and no one takes a double dog dare so I pondered the situation for a second and decided to shoot and aim for the open window. I pulled the rubber band as far back as I dared and shot. The BB started toward the window but curved and hit the window facing above the teachers head dropped on her head and fell on the book. She growled “who did that”? Complete silence. I felt safe as Bambi’s Hunter. The teacher growled”, if someone does not tell me I will whip every one in here like I have done before”. The fourth grade girl just had to say in a small girlish way “Charles did it”. Here came teach she first slapped both sides of my face while pulling my hair and then she hit me across the back several times with her paddle narrow side to the skin and told me she hoped that hurt me for a month. It did.

While I am at the School house a couple of things I must point out. I made my worst grades in spelling and I did not know what sentence structure meant. A very nice lady professor at Louisiana College helped me two afternoons per week and I made a “D” in both my Freshman English classes. I discovered in my literature class I had a small amount of talent to write prose and poetry. We will go into that later.