Green! White! Vikes! Fight!

Now that I don’t have a T.V. to entertain me, I’ve been calling all my friends I haven’t spoken to in while to catch up. One friend told me he started student teaching at Stine School yesterday. He told me he kept thinking about me and Flo, since that is where we met. As we talked I told him I went to that school for 8 years. He suddenly got quiet. Every time I tell someone that they look a little surprised. Kindergarten through 6th grade - that’s seven years. True. I was in the third grade twice. No, I did not fail. I was held back because I was “too small.”

My birthday is in the fall, and I barely made the cut off date to begin school. Because my brother and sister were so much older than me, I was already reading and I was very anxious to go to school. I did well the first few years, but there was one problem. My classmates were not treating me as a peer. They treated me more like a pet, or a doll. I was so tiny they would carry me around all the time. Of course, the fact that I am the youngest in my family and was used to being babied didn’t help. I think the best words to describe me back then would have to be spazzy, little brat.

By the time I had completed the third grade, my parents decided enough was enough. They wanted me held back to give me more time to mature. The school district said they couldn’t do it because I passed all my classes, so my mother made a big stink until they relented.

You’d think that being held back would have been totally humiliating to me, but it wasn’t. All the other kids would whisper about the little girl who got held back because she was too small. I knew the entire curriculum since I had already done it and I often would help the other students. As far as I was concerned, I ruled the third grade.

My parents' plan paid off. My grades improved and so did my personality. And best of all, that is how I met my best friend, Flo.