Flashback Friday, Second Grade Hell

This post doesn’t mean I’m not feeling great. It is inspired by a post by Candy’s Daily Dandy yesterday.

GLAD IT’S FRIDAY!!!!

In first grade, I liked school and I got A’s. Then we moved half way across the country over the summer.

In second grade, I got bussed to this old, nasty school. I hated it especially because there was a new school very near my house.

My second grade school was all brown, brown bricks, brown wood, walls and floor, brown desks. Everything seemed dirty and stinky and unsanitary. I remember sitting in my nasty brown desk, trying not to touch the desk or anything at all, except what I had brought from home.

I remember there was a secret panel in the hallway (I shit you not) and at lunch the secret panel was opened and it led down to the dungeon/cafeteria. It was white-green florescent lights in a windowless stinking hellhole. I didn’t want to eat any of the food because it seemed dirty and unsanitary. And the dungeon smelled like nasty food, steam, and dirty dishwater.

When I got home from school, every day my Mom said I stank. I knew it was from that dirty nasty school. She didn’t seem to believe me when I said how bad it was.

My teacher was Miss Bolware. To me she was a disgusting filthy hag. When she first saw me she gave me a hug, and I hated being touched by her. She didn’t stay nice long, she would yell and grab you by the arm and whack you with her filthy brown ruler. I hated it when she touched me with her nasty old witch hands.

I felt trapped, and I couldn’t run away because I was seven years old and didn’t even know where I was, just some nasty place on the other side of town. I lived in that town for ten years and I don’t think I ever learned where that school was. I don’t remember ever seeing it again.  I was in Junior High School before I saw any kids from that second grade year again.

From third grade on, I went to the new school, walking distance to my house. But I never got good grades. Second grade is probably what destroyed my relationship with my parents. I didn’t get good grades in second grade, and I got punished. Then I figured that if I started getting good grades, my parents would think their punishment was effective, so I didn’t get good grades, and was more or less in a state of constant punishment for bad grades till the 11th grade, (when I had a teacher I had a crush on, Mrs Berry, I got A’s in her class!)

Incredibly, we then moved again and I went to 12th grade and graduated from a different school. The idea crossed my mind that maybe we moved because I got some good grades again, but I didn’t really think that. But I got crappy grades in 12th grade too, just to be safe.

One year later, when I turned 18, I joined the navy, and got out of my parents lives as much as I could.

8 thoughts on “Flashback Friday, Second Grade Hell

  1. I went to thirteen different schools by my Sophomore year..it was so natural to me, that it never occurred to me that it might be a bad thing..think all those different schools and meeting and losing so many people gave me (and other brats) the ability to jump into each and any situation and thrive.

  2. I love this!!!!! YOU rock!
    I’m sorry for it all. The stinky school, the bad grades, your parents relationship and your bad grades/school experience.
    I’m glad my post inspired you and I hope it was somewhat cathartic!

  3. Ugly schools and psychotic teachers can have a profound effect on the lives of people. I think all teachers should be monitored regularly for signs of mental illness. And I say that as someone who taught for a number of years and saw what some of my colleagues were doing to impressionable young minds.

  4. Aw that is so, so very sad. I don’t know how we could give every child a wonderful education, but I wish we could at least not give children horrible experiences. 🙁 Plus it sounds like you got the short end of the political stick with busing to top it all off. I’m sorry that your relationship with your parents suffered so much for it. The sad thing is that you were using such advanced critical thinking skills to figure out the relationship between your grades and the punishment and whether or not your parents would think their punishment was working. I’m sure you would have thrived in a different second grade environment where that kind of thinking was valued and encouraged.

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