This year my teaching position has changed so that I work with grades 4th-8th instead of 6th-8th. The 4th graders seem like they're about 20 years younger than the 6th graders, and I often try to think back on what life was like at that age in order to better pretend to be a teacher. Unfortunately, my life during 3rd-4th grade has nothing in common with theirs, and not for the usual reasons. This may have been the turning point for me. In other words, any hope of me turning out to be a normal human being was shot out of a cannon during my 3rd-4th grade years.
3rd grade began innocently enough. It was a drastic change for me that I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't an Indian, or a Native American. I spent most of the summer before 3rd grade dressed in leathers, wearing beads, a full headdress, and living in a miniature tepee in the living room. My suction cup bow and arrow was taken from me after I picked a fly off the wall just above my step-father's head. I imagine that many white 3rd graders these days have to come back to school dealing with the fact that they aren't black, and no matter how hard they try they can't be cool. A few more have to deal with the fact that they aren't asian, and will have to go through life with low test scores, low salaries, and no chance with asian chicks. I matured slowly, so I didn't realize these things until college.
My father spent most of my 2nd and 3rd grades working in Saudi Arabia. Up to this point, my father was possibly the meanest bastard alive. While in Saudi Arabia my dad had a series of life-changing experiences, and came back around Christmas of 3rd grade a completely changed man. We had weekend visitation, and he didn't kill me or any of my siblings, so life was looking up.
What I didn't notice about 3rd grade was that life wasn't sounding good. I gradually began to lose my hearing--gradually enough that I didn't really notice. By the time I was in 4th grade, I was almost completely deaf. Nobody else noticed either, because I was such a strange and quiet kid anyway. I'd follow ants around all day, trying to communicate with them. I was always seeing ghosts, which I think other kids did, but my ghosts moved furniture around the room and chased me with coat hangers. Ok, I make a retraction. I never had a shot in hell of being normal.
I also used to hang out in the back yard of some hippies across the street, because they had these huge bushes that always had praying mantises on them. I'd catch a praying mantis, keep it in a bottle, and feed it crickets. This is a pretty cool thing to do if you want to teach your kid some science. They'll also learn that giant radioactive praying mantises would really fuck us up. My mom used to always bitch about me hanging out at the praying mantis bushes, because she didn't trust the hippies. The problem was solved one day when the police and fire department surrounded the house and took all of the residents out in handcuffs. The fire department went out back and chopped down all of my praying mantis bushes and mowed the place down to the ground. I was horrified, but probably not half as horrified as the hippies. Those dudes were way ahead of their time with the organic gardening, though.
Somewhere between 3rd and 4th grade my step-father flipped his lid. I think what really happened was that in the year it took to meet and marry my mom, he tried to only drink beer constantly to make a good impression. Once they got married, he gradually reintroduced Jim Beam. These days he only drinks beer for breakfast--he drinks Jim Beam on hot days, cold days, brushes his teeth with it, slicks back his hair with it, bathes in it, even waters his lawn with it in case he passes out face down. He started behaving at home much like you would expect Pauly from Rocky to behave, except with 6 kids running around. And my oldest brother was in junior high and starting to resemble The Incredible Hulk. Things were about to change.
By 4th grade, I was completely deaf. Nobody noticed or cared much, because I kept my mouth shut and had become proficient at reading lips. I did really well in school, and was a teacher favorite. I loved science class, and tried to be the first to answer every question, even though I couldn't hear the teacher. Luckily she taught from her desk at the front of the class most of the time--none of this moving around the classroonm bullshit that they try to get us to do these days. One weekend when my dad picked us up, he told us that he knew one of our teachers. All of the other kids tried to guess who it was, and I just sat there with my mouth shut. Eventually, when nobody guessed, I piped in with my teacher's name. Not only did I guess right, but I also figured out after a few weeks that they were dating. A few weeks more, and something really bizarre happened. My mom marched us all downstairs for a meeting and announced that we were going to live with my dad. Only we didn't move in with my dad--we moved in with my teacher!
About 4 months into their courtship, my dad married my teacher, and I had to go to class every day and address her as Mrs. Greeb. Then the bitch turned on me. Not only did my A+ go down to a regular A, but she figured out my secret. She started asking me questions at home, only not from the front of the room at an observable desk. She figured out that from behind, I didn't respond at all. After a few experiments, a trip to the doctor was arranged and I took a hearing test. The test was called off when I tried to guess when the beeps came and which ear they might test. I went to a specialist, who discovered that my tiny ear canals were severely impacted, and after a lengthy and painful procedure, my hearing was fully restored. That probably sounds great, but I remember it as the worst day of my life. I went from blissful silence to the amplified sounds of the world in a matter of minutes. The voices of the nurses and doctors pounded away at my eardrums, and I started bawling my eyes out. This is going to sound made up, but not only did a thunderstorm roll in on my way home, but I was driven home by my stepmother's friend in an old beat up Datsun with no muffler! I laid in the back with my hands over my ears and screamed the whole way home. I'm sure all of you married guys out there will echo this sentiment, but Fuck Hearing!
The last thing that happened in 4th grade is that my two friends and I were chased by a giant, 8 foot tall monster that lived in Derry Lake. I'm not fucking kidding, but this entry is already too long and boring to go on. Flick will be back soon if his wife hasn't thrown him off of the boat, so if I have a chance and I think it's good enough, I'll elaborate. If anyone else wants to write, just e-mail Phil Collins at Flick'sBasement.com.
-Greeb
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