Twelve Long Years

            
             Have you ever wished you could go back and revise or correct something that you did when you were younger? The desire I have is to repeat many aspects of my grade school and high school years and amend what errors I could. For numerous reasons I will explore further, my education was not as beneficial as it could have been to my intellectual progress. Now that is not to say that I didn't learn anything. I assuredly gained my fair amount of knowledge. But there were many things that would have raised the quality of my schooling. I am (of course) accountable for most of them, I am sad to say. .
             I started pre-kindergarten at a Catholic school in Portland. I would come to hate the 22 mile drive five days a week. Waking at dawn and driving for what seemed like hours from my hometown of Rockport was aggravating to say the least. The bothersome aspect of that school was going to church every day. Sometimes twice. Now, this is not to say that I have an aversion to religion. I just didn't particularly enjoy having to sit in the uncomfortable pews when there was a perfectly good playground right outside. The swing sets were a bit more attractive than singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.".
             I was enthusiastic about starting first grade at a new school and all of the new experiences that would follow. One of the first was the discovery of office referrals. A "yellow slip" is what we dubbed the piece of paper every student came to dread. We called it that because the top carbon sheet that one was required to show to one's parents was a pale yellow. By the end of my first grade year I had racked up six yellow slips, mostly because of my behavior. That may not seem like many to some, but after no trouble in kindergarten my parents did not find it acceptable. The increased freedom of first grade enticed me to test its boundaries, much to the annoyance of my parents and the faculty.
             Prior to the first grade I had tested well in an exam, and it showed that I should be in an advanced placement class yet there were none at that time.