SECOND GRADE ESCAPE ARTIST

TORTURE BEYOND REASON

Wasatch Elementary School. Provo, Utah.

At 7 years old, second grade at Wasatch School was six hours of humiliation. I'd pretend to read, avoiding the smirks and chuckles of pudgy Dave Beck and the hateful stares of the Croft girls with their saucer eyes pushing through their pop-bottle glasses.

       Reading groups were the worst. Six little bodies packed around a table with our teacher, heavy with child, taking up the space of three milk cows at feeding time. I would hide the Dick and Jane reader under the table, pretending it was lost. But she was onto me. Too many “lost” books found on my lap under the table. I sat nervously, breaking out in sweat droplets and a heated forehead, my hands clenching and unclenching, eyes frantically searching ahead to where my turn might land. With some extra time to examine the words maybe my pride might be spared. It rarely worked.

Francis Max Roger. Age 7.

      The bathroom! What teacher could deny a desperate kid? It was right across the hall. A good acting job could get me out before the moment of judgment. Most people think of a bathroom as a place to relieve themselves, but to a panicked 7 year old it was a playground. Playing with water bubbles in the sink, and balancing precariously on the stall tops five feet off the ground was great fun. A little rank, but a small sacrifice to escape a reading group. But, just as the frolicking would reach the point of ecstasy the door would open and a legitimate potty goer would show up. Not just a potty goer, but a tattletale to boot! One who thought the teacher would love to know what mischief was going on in the boys’ bathroom. Actually, if the truth were known, she was enjoying the relief of my being gone as much as I was.

      There were other alternatives to the lavatory. Once permission was granted to visit the bathroom, instead of going across the hall, you could take one left turn down the hall, then another left turn, through a door down some stairs and there you were. The Furnace Room! Talk about a playroom. Tools of every kind, fire in the coal furnace, broken furniture, and no blabber mouth kid wandering in.

       But every true adventure has its dangers, like running into a grizzly bear in the woods. The Furnace Room adventure had its own fearsome beast, Luke the Janitor. Dusty overalls, work boots four sizes too big, scruffy beard, greasy hair, and an attitude. This was his domain, his world, and his alone – not to be shared with a runaway rascal. It was amazing – Luke, with adrenaline pumping, could carry a kid by the nape of the neck, up the stairs, and down the hall with his feet rarely touching the ground. Yes. He made quite a sight, silhouetted in the classroom doorway, in all his custodial glory, dangling a nearly choked out kid six inches off the ground. “This one yours?” he’d growl.

Furnace Room. 1950s.

     This sort of trouble usually required a meeting with my parents. My Mom most likely. Dad was only required to administer the spankings. Would it be the hand, the belt, or a willow from the tree in the back yard? The trick was timing, the gut-wrenching scream of pain. If it came even a split second too soon, it would result in more and harder spanks. But, if the scream was released at precisely the right moment, it could trigger such guilt in Dad that he would feel the punishment was satisfactory.

      The real question was WHY? Why indeed was I acting out? Was it because I was the youngest in

my grade? Maybe I should be held back? Oh, the humiliation -- it would follow me the rest of my

Hearing test. 1950s.

life. My parents couldn’t do it to me. But on the other hand maybe just the threat would do the job. Maybe summer school was the answer? That’s it. Take me, a kid who disliked school, and give me more during my school recovery days. Even better, let’s keep me after school. Make my school day longer. Such brilliance!

      Maybe they should test my hearing? If I can’t hear I can’t learn. Or they should give me an IQ test? If I just didn’t have it, they could put me in Special Ed with the other struggling kids. They could observe me. Yes! They could put experts behind the one-way glass and study me in action. I would never know they were there. Just one problem. The room with the one-way glass was one of my adventure stops when escaping the classroom. I had enjoyed watching other teachers and kids through the mirrored glass. I would know what was up!

      All in all, I was pulled from the classroom for one-on-one remediation. You know, Consonant Clusters, Short and Long vowel sounds. "Can you read this card?" "I think so. A-D-D." "Good, now this one." "OK. A-D-H-D." "Great! I think we're making progress."

     As luck would have it, I was to travel unchaperoned to the far side of the school. The land of 5^th and 6^th grade students. All right! Uncharted territory. Unexplored rooms and doors awaited me.