Autobiographical sketch: Class clown. He was in my class all through school. He was the one who blurted out the answer every time the teacher asked a question. Or made smart remarks out loud. There’s one like him in every class. Some of the other kids accused him of reading the encyclopedia for fun. They couldn’t understand how he knew the answers so fast. And of course, it didn’t make him popular with the rest of us. The teachers, at the first of the school year, were glad to have someone speak up, to keep things going. But then, along about mid-term, they’d get tired of it, and make pointed remarks, like “Does anyone Else have an answer?” Or they’d look at him and say, “I know You know the answer, give someone else a chance.” He’d start off, every year, with so much energy, and was so excited about learning, while the rest of us were there to socialize, make friends, and get by. And then, after a while, he stopped. You could tell, he was just there because he had to be, and not to learn anymore. He was constantly getting into trouble, and I think he was on a first name basis with every principal we had. They started up a gifted program when we were in eighth or ninth grade, and put him in it, but by that time it was too late. It was kind of sad, in a way. Because, he didn’t crack a book, and made better grades than a lot of the kids. But it was clearly not because he was trying. And of course, that made him even less popular. I know I wouldn’t like to study all night for a test, and score below the guy that wasn’t trying. Thinking back, I remember that they built one new school for us, and renovated the high school while we were there, but all that did was turn the teachers into the Gum Patrol. You know, they spent more time telling us how we needed to take care of the new building than they did teaching. And that just set him off worse. There was a store across the road from the high school, and he’d go at lunch every day to buy a Plenti-pak of gum, and give a piece to every student in the class. He developed a seriously bad attitude, except the teachers thought he didn’t realize it, and would have long talks with him, and we could hear how it ended every time- “You need to straighten up, and get rid of this attitude.” They didn’t care that they had given it to him. He scored higher on the SAT our Senior year than anyone else in the school, and highest in the county on the Armed Services vocational test. Not bad for a guy who worked at the factory six days a week, from four to twelve. Which is what he was doing, by that time. He had to take a day off from work to graduate. I think about him from time to time, and wonder how he would have turned out, had someone noticed what was happening in time. And I wonder how many more there are like him. Vernon L. Garrett
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:42:38 +0000
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