I Normally Don't Read My Fortune

Or my horoscope, either. And I think we've figured out that if the fortune in question is on myway.com, it's not my personal fortune, but the fortune of anyone who accesses the page. And that's just a bit unfair. I mean, how am I supposed to live my life by the fortunes of others? Well, I just don't know how, so there.

But for some reason, yesterday I scrolled down the myway page a bit, probably to read the Odd News headlines, and I saw my fortune. It said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the idea, "Think for a moment about the fourth grade."

Now, this is a very odd fortune. It's cryptic is what it is. And it's something that I would never have done in a million years, thinking about the fourth grade. But of course the minute they told me to think about it, I thought about it. And I've thought about it a lot since then. Damn those myway people.

I was in the fourth grade a long time ago. I mean, a long time ago. You folks may have thought the fourth grade was a long time ago for you, but I promise it was longer ago for me. I did ride the school bus, though, unlike my dad in the fourth grade, which was even a longer time ago, as evidenced by the fact that he had to walk upwards of five miles to school, in shabby shoes, on mountain roads, and only had a cold biscuit to eat once he got there. Then there was always something about having to shine shoes after school till his back hurt, but I was generally tuned out by the time that portion of the story arrived.

For me, fourth grade was in good old GIS. It held grades 4, 5, and 6. My teacher was Miss P. Miss P was old, even then, and she lived till long after I graduated high school. I, later on, found out that Miss P was quite the nice woman, with a great sense of humor, but in the fourth grade she was best described as "no nonsense." Miss P had long, long gray hair, which she wore up in a bun, she was built like a pepperpot, and had an old face but the greatest skin in the world. It was like cream, that old skin. Miss P, as you may have guessed by the "Miss," never married. As an adult (or what passes for one), I came to realize that maybe I'd missed something in the fourth grade, we kids back then being oh-so-naive, because Miss P had a friend named Miss W she lived with. They were roomies, and went everywhere together for as long as I knew them. They were inseparable.

There were about 20 kids in Miss P's class. She was one of 4 fourth grade teachers. Jack and Scott and Gary were in the class with me, they were the most popular boys, and Shirley and Elaine were probably the most popular girls, Cindy was best at kickball, and Judy, who was my second cousin and developed breasts very, very early (she looked like a high schooler in the fourth grade), was the smartest. Angie was my very own black friend, she was very athletic, and I loved her hair. She wore it, like little black girls did in those days, in four or five braided pigtails on various points of her head. Angie could always make me laugh. Doug was cute, but moved away before we all reached high school, as did Jimmy and Herbie.

Shirley and I had a dress that was exactly the same, it was white and had lemons all over it. This was a complete shock to me, because my lemon dress was a hand-me-down from my sister, which meant it was bought in Charleston, where we used to live. That there could be two dresses alike made that far apart amazed me, and one day we made plans to wear our lemon dresses on the same day. And so we did, and at recess that day someone pulled the bow at the back of my dress and ripped it off. I kept pulling at the stray threads till by about 4pm my dress was basically a rag. Goodbye, lemon dress.

Fourth grade was the first year of SRA, which was the "in" reading program at the time, and I had to migrate to Mrs L's class for that, because that's where the best readers went. I hated Mrs L, she was the crabbiest teacher in fourth grade (but not at GIS, that was an honor reserved for Mrs C in the sixth grade), and I hated SRA. I could never understand why the SRA people would never let you erase. If you made a mistake, you had to cross out your answer and write your new answer beside it. For a while I thought this was due to the cheapness of their workbooks, the paper in them was nothing more than glorified newsprint, but I came to realize that this is because those evil SRA people wanted the teachers to know if you didn't know the answer the first time around. Mrs L was a stickler about a lot of things, but that erasing rule was her number one. If she saw erase marks in your workbook, which was a certainty with that shitty paper, you were in trouble. Crab, crab, crab.

(I must admit though, I liked the color-coding of the SRA program. You started in some non-descript color, like purple, and worked your way up through a series of colors, and if you were very smart indeed you reached gold. I can't remember if I actually did. I know I got to silver.)

About halfway through the school year, Miss P broke her leg. She was gone for a month or so, a month where we had a series of substitutes and didn't do much, and when Miss P came back she was in a cast, from the knee down, but it was a walking cast. So you could hear her hobbling up behind you, ready to reprimand you at a moment's notice.

Another thing I remember about the fourth grade was actually the sixth grade. See, the sixth grade was where the Special Ed class was also housed, and that's where Wonko and Conago were. Wonko and Conago were part of The Sisters. In our town there were a set of sisters whose names were, and don't challenge me on this, for I'm telling the truth, and I have the yearbooks to prove it - Wonko, Conago, Capater, and Cranyon. Capater and Cranyon were high schoolers, and Wonko and Conago were big enough to be, they were like six feet tall. Then again, they were probably 16 or so, so that would explain that. Anyway, Wonko and Conago were tough girls indeed, and thought nothing of going up to anyone and taking anything they wanted. If you were at the far end of the hall leaving Mrs L's room after SRA and saw Wonko or Conago entering the building at the other end of the hall, you just went ahead and fished your lunch money out of your little rubber change purse. Because within minutes, they were going to have it. This was the fourth graders' first experience with the Special Ed kids, so we were scared of most of them, but the only ones who deserved it were Wonko and Conago.

The Special Ed teacher was Mr B, and he was so frightingly mean that when he did lunch duty, no one was allowed to speak. To speak! Imagine the indigestion of sitting on your little bench trying to eat your lunch in total silence, knowing that if you as much as asked for the mustard you were in line for a few whacks from Mr B's paddle. (Ahhh, the good old days of corporal punishment....)

I got my ears pierced when I was in the fourth grade. That was a big deal for me. And wonder of wonders, when I was in the fourth grade the Beatles released "Let It Be," which Miss P seemed to love. We had no idea Miss P even knew who the Beatles were, but she loved that song. And she let Gary bring his "Let It Be" single to school one day so we could all listen to it on the school record player, which normally played nothing more than the soundtracks to the filmstrips about the earth's crust we had to watch in science class.

And in a story telling of the times, in the fourth grade Miss P also had a tin canister that held little cut-up Bible verses, and every morning a row of kids had to come to the front of the class, pick out a verse, and read it. I hated this, not only because Bible verses are filled with Bible language, which I never seemed to be able to wrap my lips around, but also because one of the verses in that canister had the word "hell" contained in it, and I lived in fear that I would be called upon to read the "dirty" Bible verse. And one day I had to. There were snickers all around, as there were any time a kid got the "hell" verse.

So that was the fourth grade. I'd spend two more years at good old GIS, joining the band in the fifth grade, surviving Mrs C in the sixth grade, and dodging Wonko and Conago all over the place. Dipping in and out of classrooms with the same kids and different ones, ones I'd known forever and most of whom I'd end up graduating with. Two of those kids are dead now, one in a car accident right after graduation and one by his own hand several years ago.

Some are long gone, I don't know where, some I do know where but never keep up with them. Our class (1978) to this day has the largest number of never-married members, and of gay members, which could explain why some of them never married, I suppose. Somewhere I have a picture of our fourth grade class at GIS, standing there in front of the school, on bleachers, Miss P with us in her walking cast. I couldn't find it anywhere, which made me kind of sad, now that I've been forced to think about the fourth grade by those myway people. I do have my fourth grade school picture, though.

I can remember that purple dress very well. It was thick and warm and I liked it. The hair, though. That is some suspect hair. I guess some things never change.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, what about the rising gas prices?
- Honorable mention goes to Kellie, with her "I Took Over Ivanna's N-out-mart." (Very lucrative nowadays!)
- Runner-up goes to LilyG, with her "International terrorist -- OPEC. It's nasty." And LilyG knows her terrorists!
- And this week's winner is Flipsy cab, with her "Imagine: to operate in neutral." Which we all may be doing soon.
Thanks to all who played. I promise, one day you'll actually win something.