Pigpen of the Day
When I am at a loss for something to blog about in the present I ,fortunately, have a wealth of stories from my past. For example I have memories from my school days that will last me a life time. Some of these stories appear to be so bizarre that I can't blame people for thinking that I made this stuff up. Let me assure you that these things really happened. I was there. If you want to read my fiction stories check out my Roswell 1947 blog.
When I attended school in the 1960's and 1970's it was a different world. The teachers in this time seemed to have total freedom in the way that they chose to discipline their pupils. I will start off with a case in point. In fact this story may help explain why I am the way I am today. I really should make a You Tube version of this story too.
When I was a grade five student I was a very untidy young lad. Being fat to boot this usually didn't score me a lot of popularity points with my teachers. We didn't have yearbooks in grade five but if we did you would not see the caption "most likely to succeed" posted next to my picture. In grade five I was fat, usually had soup stains on my tee shirt and had a runny,snotty nose. I had tomato soup for lunch pretty well every school day and my breath usually smelled like tomato soup. Along with the tomato soup stains on my shirt there was usually ample evidence of what I ate for lunch every day. My nose would perpetually run like tap as I recall have one long cold from November through March of every school year.
That school year our regular grade five teacher left work part way during the semester to go on a maternity leave. A term substitute teacher took over for her in February of that year. This lady liked to run a neat, clean and tidy classroom. Due to my natural disposition I was somewhat of a thorn in her side. We usually started off each afternoon with twenty to thirty minutes of silent reading Some of you younger readers may remember this as USSR period. The rule during silent reading was that everyone in the classroom remain dead silent. Our new teacher would occasionally drop a pin on the floor to find out if she could still hear it while we supposedly were thoroughly engaged by our favorite book.
While the students full attention was on reading the current page in their novels our teacher would sneakily make a change in her footwear. She would change from her hard soled shoes into her ultra soft soled sneakers. Our teacher would then proceed to walk up and down the rows and pretend that she was checking to make sure that all her pupils were indeed reading and not drawing funny pictures. Her real intent,however, was to check if there were any untidy desks in her classroom. It was only a matter of time before she got an eyeful of chubby little Kenny's pigpen desk. Possibly, it was the flies buzzing around my desk that tipped her off. Let us take a snapshot of the inside of little Kenny's desk. The snapshot would show scribblers crushed and squeezed every which way into his desk. In fact, only a forensics expert could positively identify them as, in better days, being scribblers. One could also make out crumpled pieces of paper that were the record of little Kenny's weekly spelling tests. Some brown bags probably contained the left overs fro the last three day's lunches. Squashed into this over crowded desk were old snot covered Kleenex's. The teacher in one lightening fast movement turned my desk over onto the floor. She looked at me and said. "Kenny, you've got until recess time to get this mess cleaned up."
Although I was red faced and teary eyed I dutifully went to work. But my humiliation was far from over. While I was cleaning up my desk the teacher had reached into her desk and pulled out a laminated picture of an ugly old sow. Just before recess this lady called me up to the front of the class. She took the pig pcture and pinned it to my jacket. She said, "Kenny , you are now the pigpen of the day.
When I attended school in the 1960's and 1970's it was a different world. The teachers in this time seemed to have total freedom in the way that they chose to discipline their pupils. I will start off with a case in point. In fact this story may help explain why I am the way I am today. I really should make a You Tube version of this story too.
When I was a grade five student I was a very untidy young lad. Being fat to boot this usually didn't score me a lot of popularity points with my teachers. We didn't have yearbooks in grade five but if we did you would not see the caption "most likely to succeed" posted next to my picture. In grade five I was fat, usually had soup stains on my tee shirt and had a runny,snotty nose. I had tomato soup for lunch pretty well every school day and my breath usually smelled like tomato soup. Along with the tomato soup stains on my shirt there was usually ample evidence of what I ate for lunch every day. My nose would perpetually run like tap as I recall have one long cold from November through March of every school year.
That school year our regular grade five teacher left work part way during the semester to go on a maternity leave. A term substitute teacher took over for her in February of that year. This lady liked to run a neat, clean and tidy classroom. Due to my natural disposition I was somewhat of a thorn in her side. We usually started off each afternoon with twenty to thirty minutes of silent reading Some of you younger readers may remember this as USSR period. The rule during silent reading was that everyone in the classroom remain dead silent. Our new teacher would occasionally drop a pin on the floor to find out if she could still hear it while we supposedly were thoroughly engaged by our favorite book.
While the students full attention was on reading the current page in their novels our teacher would sneakily make a change in her footwear. She would change from her hard soled shoes into her ultra soft soled sneakers. Our teacher would then proceed to walk up and down the rows and pretend that she was checking to make sure that all her pupils were indeed reading and not drawing funny pictures. Her real intent,however, was to check if there were any untidy desks in her classroom. It was only a matter of time before she got an eyeful of chubby little Kenny's pigpen desk. Possibly, it was the flies buzzing around my desk that tipped her off. Let us take a snapshot of the inside of little Kenny's desk. The snapshot would show scribblers crushed and squeezed every which way into his desk. In fact, only a forensics expert could positively identify them as, in better days, being scribblers. One could also make out crumpled pieces of paper that were the record of little Kenny's weekly spelling tests. Some brown bags probably contained the left overs fro the last three day's lunches. Squashed into this over crowded desk were old snot covered Kleenex's. The teacher in one lightening fast movement turned my desk over onto the floor. She looked at me and said. "Kenny, you've got until recess time to get this mess cleaned up."
Although I was red faced and teary eyed I dutifully went to work. But my humiliation was far from over. While I was cleaning up my desk the teacher had reached into her desk and pulled out a laminated picture of an ugly old sow. Just before recess this lady called me up to the front of the class. She took the pig pcture and pinned it to my jacket. She said, "Kenny , you are now the pigpen of the day.
Comments
Post a Comment