Uh Oh!

Uh Oh!

I was in fourth grade. At the time there was no such thing as ADHD or another malady that might or might not have impacted your attention span…SQUIRREL!…

Sorry, now where was I, oh yes, fourth grade.

I was the type of child that had to be doing things all of the time. If you were teaching me for a long period of time by just talking or if you gave me an assignment that I found either boring or too easy, I would look to find something else to occupy my attention.  My teacher, Miss Klammer, did not always agree with my choices. I don’t remember what I was doing the first time, probably laughing at some joke that I had created or talking to a neighboring deskmate, but I got in trouble with her and my penance no doubt was extra work, a changed seat, or was sent out of the room.

What I do remember is the second time I was caught getting distracted. Our classroom was set up with fixed desks that were bolted to the floor. The top of the desk had a downwards slant towards where you were sitting and it had a raised edge at the top end, I guess to prevent you from pushing books and such off of it. Miss Klammer was up in front of the room going on about some concept we were about to undertake. It had to be either math or writing, as I had a blank sheet of paper on my desk. Staring at the paper I started moving it around. When that neglected to hold my interest, I decided to blow down on the paper. I guess my expectation was that the paper would just move towards the top of the desk. It didn’t. What happened when I blew down on the paper was that it mysteriously began to rise. I was amazed. I was so enthralled that I continued blowing on the paper in different ways.

After a few minutes of these experiments, I did manage to hear my name being called. It seems my teacher, must have been bored with what she was teaching because her attention was drawn to what I was doing. I assumed she was as excited about this unintentional learning moment as I was. That wasn’t the case. Instead, I was sent to the principal’s office.

This being my second offense (there may have been more, but I only remember the two), I had to be disciplined. My consequence was that I was placed in a 3rd-grade class for 3 days until my parents came in and bailed me out. After that I got to go back to 4th grade, obviously having learned my lesson. At least that’s what they thought.

Interestingly, the third-grade teacher whose class I was put in, Mrs. Fixel. ended up being my 6th-grade teacher.  I’m the only one in my family that remembers this incident. My parents are not alive to back me up, not that they would remember it anyway. So you’ll just have to trust in my mem…SQUIRREL!