In fourth grade, I was nine years old. It was a traumatic year since I had to walk one mile to school with my younger brother going to kindergarten. Why? I asked. We lived across the street from St. Bernard’s School. That’s where I had been going to school since first grade. All my friends went there. We were a neighborhood gang. Then, when my younger brother, Brian, came to age for kindergarten, St. Bernard’s did not offer a kindergarten class, just like mine when I had to go to an all-girl, high school miles away yet was driven there. My mother didn’t drive yet. Idea! Why not have Gary walk Brian to school at Benson West?! A public school with lots of non-Catholic teachers, principals, students, janitors, and even bullies.
So, it was most punishing when it was cold and snowy. To help alleviate some of my sufferings, my mother bought me a car coat as it was called. It was bright red, knee-length winter coat with a fake-fur, black collar. Might as well placed a large target on my back for snowball artillery practice. That’s exactly what happened. The style that year was multi-colored stocking caps with a long tail. Some older (couldn’t have been more than a sixth-grader) Brainiac from Benson West decided to put a ball bearing in the end of the fluffy tassel. He’d swing it around like a sling of David & Goliath fame and hit unsuspecting younger students. Oh, and here comes the kid in the red coat! Let’s see if the Brainiac could swing and punch a hole in the stylish, red car coat kid worn my Little Lord Fauntleroy.
On top of that, it was the Kennedy-Nixon campaign for president in 1960. Guess who all the school was for: Nixon. Catholics thought Kennedy was the one. Being Catholic, I secretly chose Kennedy but then was required to wear a political button. Yet another reason to make me a target. I thought kids were nice to me though. They probably thought I had enough already with my inner desire to become a living human target.
Lastly, one more arrow in the side of Little Lord Fauntleroy. When it came to learning an instrument, the school, in their omniscience, chose the Tonette for our first musical instrument. It was a cool, plastic version of a clarinet without the silver. Just cheap plastic, though it was essentially a flute that you held out in front of you when playing. It was an exciting moment when I first heard the news. Boys get black ones. Girls get white ones. That was appropriate I thought as a mature fourth grader. Guess what they ran out of by the time they got to me. Yes, I had to pay my parent’s good, hard-earned four dollars for a white Tonette. Yet another degradation for Little Lord Fauntleroy.
That summer, after fourth grade, I spent time away on my Schwinn bike quite a bit and had mudball fights in the alley behind us, both of which served as a therapy to avoid my near nervous breakdown in the fourth grade.
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