You've been following me through calm events from grades one through five. We are entering a whole other set of events, as I move us into grade six. My friends and I finally began acting out. We all had an alcoholic parent and were attempting to spread our previously restricted wings. The teacher who felt on the brunt of it all was Mrs A.

 

By 6th grade we’d taken on another cohort, Danny, who would later in our freshman year, write rhyming poetry for me. We had found our best coping mechanism- a sense of humor. We were just so silly that even Mrs. A., who was a good sport, had a difficult time refraining from laughing. When I was teaching 6-8th grade, I learned how difficult it was to restrain myself from laughing at the class comedian, and yet probably not the best idea.

 

Danny wrote backhand. I loved his writing and had him teach me to write backhand.  From then on I wrote backhand, until I was in college learning to be a teacher. My teacher gave me a sound warning that if I did not correct my slant I would have every student in my classroom writing backhand. We certainly wouldn't want to let all those backhand writing people out into society. What would become of this world?

 

As we began to get a little out of hand, the classroom did not seem to be large enough to separate all my friends from me and our ease to chat with each other. I definitely had one or two of those classrooms in my teaching experience.  Too many friends, not enough chairs to separate them. In one class I had only 13 kids. What chance did I have?

 

After allowing us a great deal of leeway Mrs. A. had to put her foot down, take charge and began keeping us after school, which wasn't much better. We became her constant companions night after night. 

Finally, she didn't seem to be able to curtail our acting out. We were either laughing, chatting, or turning around in our seats when we were supposed to be attentive to our assignment and quietly doing our work. I wouldn't say we were ever rude. It wasn't while she was teaching.  We weren't that bad acting out and we liked her a lot. Looking back, I think I probably had several acting-out students who ended up my favorites. 
 
She must have assessed the situation to be reaching the level of concern. Losing control of their classroom, is a nightmare for any teacher. As we were sitting there after all of the other students had been dismissed, a surprise visitor entered the classroom. Our principal gave us a lecture. Sadly, that was all a joke in our deluded minds.  I'm sure he felt satisfied having given us a strict lecture, and sure we would be model students from then on.
  
He did not know who he was dealing with. When Mrs A. finally let us go, we moved as orderly as possible, for us.  Once out in the hallway, we began hilariously laughing. I didn't notice that I had put one of my feet in front of Danny. The fourth grade classroom door had been earlier,  flung wide open and Danny lunged up against it causing it to slam shut.

 

Out darted Mrs A. and we were herded back into the classroom for more lecture. Far from remorseful, we were still laughing until we stepped foot into our classroom and quietly took our seats. If we were supposed to be feeling shame there was none. When a defeated Mrs. A. dismissed us for the second time that day we quietly left the room, marched obediently through the corridor, and down the steps to the outside fresh air. Once onto the pavement, we were bent over laughing hysterically.

 

This staying-after routine ceased when we came into the classroom one morning to find the ceiling on the desks and floor. The pipes in the biology lab above had frozen during the night. It was back to the school with the cinnamon candy rockets where we had gone for 5th grade classes. I have no memory of what happened after that.

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It was around this time of life there was an eerie occurance which I wrote about for an eighth grade composition assignment,  I reworked it later for a contest which had to be entitled “Two”. and have done some more editing for our purposes, very little though.

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                Two 
 
 
She said, “What does this mean?” 

He said, “I’ve no idea.”
 
 Not just two were standing in the eerie late Fall night air.  About half of our neighborhood dwellers were slowly collecting, emerging from a hideous pink and black and green trailer, a part house-part auto repair garage, and some from regular two-story houses.  

That was our neighborhood - two little streets intersected by an ever shorter street.  Except for the occasional kickball torpedoing over the bank into the brook and floating out of our sight, unless one of us was able to outrun the rapids to catch it at the culvert under the bridge, nothing out of the ordinary happened.
 
“Have they finally come for us?” 

“Is someone watching us?” 

 Similar murmurs could be heard as the circle of gatherers grew.  A chill shook my shoulders.  I had no idea what time it was. Kids don’t worry about those things, but I was sure it was getting past my bedtime.
 
“Well, are we going to go up there or not?” a voice shot from the spooky shadows cast by tree branches holding back the bright street light on a pole we were told never to climb. 

No one answered. 

As if each of us were attached to a pulley with a slow crank to it, our feet began hypnotically taking tiny steps toward it.  I had no knowledge of amoebae then, but if I did and I could see us from the top of the flagpole, as a speckled amoeba, ever-changing shape, slowly making its way forward in a sea of darkness.
  
We were the proverbial lemmings as we mindlessly tramped over our already plenty-tattered piece of cardboard which served as third base on our softball field, taking no mind of the dog deposits as we reached our soccer field.  Flowing forward in a mesmerized mass, we wondered what was beyond us...waiting.