The Day I Resigned from School!

I can't remember when I couldn't read. I think my sisters, Sue and Carol, encouraged me and I just kept reading until I could. I'm sure that there are a few words I mispronounce but mostly I read a lot and can't spell scheidt! Actually I do a good job phonetically but almost every time I blog there are a lot of little fine red lines under words in the paragraphs. Thank god most of the time spell checker can figure out what is wrong close enough to get a suggestion that is correct. If it gives me something close, I will probably select it and I'll bet from time to time you wonder where did that come from.
For the next week or so I am going to reach back into my childhood and select some of the funny stories I have put in my file for the book I would like to write. Here is the saga of the 7 year old Denny and the day I quit school.
Minneha Elementary was in one building and the library was in another. The built a new elementary school for the Baby boomer's and I guess they hadn't figured out how to take the books to the kids so they took the kids to the books. I loved the library and read everything I could get my hands on. From the biographies to the magazines, I loved the place. It was the thrill of the week to get to line up and go to the Library. For some reason my second grade teacher must have been a Marine Corps Instructor during the war. She hated the chatter of little kids and had no toleration of idle chatter. If you looked up idle chatter in the dictionary there was a picture of me. I loved to read and the excitement of going to the library just pushed me over the self control limit. We had no more cleared the door outside our building when the teacher stopped us and told us that the next person that talked would go back to the room and loose their library privilege. I shut up and walked straight ahead and surprise the teacher stopped the line again and said, "Denny Petty' you are talking, go back to the room." In my least ornery voice I said, "Teacher it wasn't me I was not talking." She replied, " What part of go back to the room and stay there do you not understand?" OK, I dressed that up a little, it was about 53 years ago. In my calmest voice I told her, " If you send me back, I won't be there when you get back!" The end of that meeting engagement was I was sent back to the room.
I entered that room, spun around and exited the door headed east. I quit that school and nope, I wasn't going back!
When I got home, my mother asked me why I was there in the middle of the day? I told her the story about the line dismissal and announced that I had quit, resigned, wasn't going back, finito, left that joint! No, I will not go get in the car and be taken back. I was out of there!
Her next reply was one that usually ended the meetings like that. "Wait until your father gets home". Oh crap, I hadn't considered that he might be one to be given the outcome of this engagement. Oh well, I had quit and that was that. My dad worked at Beech Aircraft and walked home for lunch. When he got there, my mother told him the story. He almost immediately went in to his bedroom. Oh oh, thats where he stores his belts and guns. I figured that I only had a short time to live. I stood tall (all three and a half feet at that time) and figured out that what ever he had to give, I was man enough to take it. He came out of the bedroom crying. Oh Shit oh dear. He just went in to the bathroom, washed his hands and face and came back out an calmly ate his lunch. He left to go back to work and didn't say a word to me.
mother let me stay home that day and bright and early I was marched to school and into the den of the Principal. I had to go in early for a week and make up the work I had missed. No, I could not quit school, They would send me to Lake Afton School for wayward boys if I didn't go to school.
There is no moral to this story, except to find out that my dad thought it was funny for me to quit school and he wasn't crying because he was mad or hurt, he was laughing and didn't want to do in front of me. MUD
Stand by for the Elephant Leg Story tomorrow.