School Sucks!

That pretty much summed up my feelings about school. I saw it as an infringement on my time. For the most part, I had good teachers except for one...Miss Parmalee. She was sent from hell. She relied on the humiliation method of motivating a kid. She was a milky pale, red haired, thin-lipped, fat calfed woman, who was engaged to a evangelical Minister. Her eyes always seemed bloodshot and she had a nose that was as upturned and wide as a Warthog's. Miss Parmalee seemed to dislike everything fun and good. When I showed up in class with a notebook that had a rendering of Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolfman, she quickly confiscated it. How was I to know it was contraband? When this horrific teacher gave all the students in the class "C's and D's" the parents finally figured out something was wrong in Roosevelt. That was the 3rd grade.

I remember my first day of the first grade. I didn't want to go. Kindergarten was a blast and I wasn't going to make the transition easily to a classroom scenario. I froze right outside the door of the classroom and told my mother "I'm not going!" I was pretty wiry and strong and my mother couldn't get me to budge. Then the Principal of the school, Mr. Daniels came down to see the commotion. He was a "Trumanesque" looking man with thin gray hair and wire rim glasses. He leaned down and politely asked me to go into the classroom. I said "no." He then mistakenly moved and put his hand on my shoulder. The sound that my foot made on his shin, still reverberates in my head to this day. My next image of Mr. Daniels was him hopping down the hall holding his leg. The poor guy.