50's Bliss, Interupted

I grew up in the zenith of the white, middle class American dream. The 1950's in my neighborhood meant newly constructed homes (with or without picket fences), working dads and stay at home moms, and kids free to roam around the block to play cowboys and indians or ride bikes to the corner store and buy penny candy, trailed always by a couple of off the leash pet dogs. Some neighbors had color TVs, and some had big stereo consoles, and some even had stand-up pools in the back yard! I was so happy!

And then I started school. The reason I present this as such a trauma was due to the Before/After qualities it presented. Before I started attending school I was a very successful small person; I crawled and then walked and then ran, all according to schedule. I learned to talk, I learned to dress myself, I did well with spoons and forks. I was easy going and low maintenance. I was happy. After I was enrolled in school it was discovered I couldn’t adjust to the classroom. I wouldn’t follow the class structure. I score well on tests. I was a problem, to the teacher, the principal and my parents. This made me unhappy.

I tried, too. I tried so hard to listen to the teacher, and do what the other students were doing when they were doing it. I knew I was smart – I read easily and often, I colored inside lines, I memorized poems. But I couldn’t find a way to demonstrate this ‘smart’ in class. I would be coloring like mad, only to discover all the rest of the class was writing spelling words. I would read with great intensity only to be admonished because the class had put their books down, as directed, 10 minutes before. I would carefully describe the life cycle of tadpole to frog to a neighboring student, but it would get me a visit to the principal’s office because I chose to deliver a science lesson in the midst of a math test. Sheesh! I couldn’t do anything right!

It took me (and the school system) many years to figure out why I had such a hard time in school. This struggle to fit into the public education system and prove myself became my odyssey, and eventually, my career.