Never Was I So Right

This little guy knew something bad when he saw it. I was right in 1947, I was right in 1956 and I was right again in 1971. School sucks.

Mom and I were driving to kindergarten at the nuns’ school and I can distinctly remember saying I didn’t want to go there. No wiser words were ever mentioned. Had I known what “school” meant, I would have escaped from that car and joined the circus. For the next nine years, I was trapped in a classroom.

It wasn’t a bad existence, actually. The nuns were great ant not at all the way I’ve heard others talk about theirs; we had a lot of fun together. The school was too poor to have a library, but the local joint was just across the street and I haunted it. In second grade, I realized how easy I had it in first; reflection came early.

Our classrooms were on the lower floor and I had the impression the nuns lived on the upper floors. Not sure if that’s accurate, but the set-up was definitely cramped at the start. There were two classes ahead of me but I don’t remember much about them; it seemed as if we had all started at the same time.

So it was bearable and in many ways a lot of fun. High school was unbearable and I never saw any reason to go back or maintain any communication with it. College was pretty much fun and, as a late-comer, I never took it too seriously; I graduated in the top 5% of the class. Grad school was a whole different professional level.