7
The last significant time I spent with the family's red Volkswagen
bus was a day in the schools' parking lot after first grade had
ended. Both of my parents had taken me there, dressed formally, then
had me wait in the bus while they went into the school building.
This was the last week of June, Nineteen Seventy-One, the sun started
to bring-up the temperature and it was getting hot inside the bus and
I didn't know what to do about it...
While Nursery School and Kindergarten had provided a place for me to
be while my mother took a part-time job at the grocery store across
the hayfield from our home, First Grade came with 'expectations.'
While the first two had mixed some learning with play, this was going
to be learning with brief periods of what was called 'recess.'
The first day our mother took my not as older brother and me to the
combination elementary and middle school building, before the rest of
the kids would normally arrive, so we could look at the list of names
next to every door in the elementary section to find which room would
be mine. Once found, my brother left for the middle school wing, my
mother left for work at the store, and I got to stand there by the
door, eventually settling to sit on the floor. After some time
another mother brought her daughter to the door to review the list
and then left her with me. A bit later, the teacher arrived and
opened the room. And thus first grade started.
For the subsequent mornings, my not as older brother and I took the
bus. But there was a problem with that: Our home was just
barely within a mile of the school and district policy was that all
kids within a mile, must walk. Our father worked out a solution to
this problem by instead having us walk away from the school by a few
hundred feet and wait at a nearby speed limit sign down the road. As
we were now more than a mile from the school, the bus would pick us
up there in the morning, but in the afternoon the driver wouldn't
worry about the rules and drop us off at the foot of our driveway.
For much of my early childhood I was either a burden to my not as
older brother, or the subject of ridicule. In my adult years I would
realize that I had taken his place as the baby of the family and
there were some resentment issues, which especially flared up
if he was assigned to watch me when the adults were away. Thus were
the mornings with him at the bus stop and the afternoons once we were
dropped off until our mother came home from work. But to me this was
just the way of life and I took it as it was without any reflection,
until my later years.
Oh, yes, I was supposed to be talking about first grade. So
it went well, I got to sit by my long time childhood friend, 'Peter
Hatch', who I had first befriended in Nursery school, but more so in
Kindergarten. The only point of complaint that I recalled from the
teacher was that I didn't know my last name, thus there was a long
evening at home where I got to write it again and again until
bedtime.
First grade routine was a couple hours of teaching, recess,
and hour and a half of teaching, lunch, second recess,
nap time, then instruction until the end of the day. Bathroom
breaks were whatever we could fit in walking to and from the room for
lunch or recess.
One day, during nap time I got a burning sensation in my bladder and
once nap break was done I asked if I could go to the bathroom. The
teacher told me 'no' and scolded me, saying I should have gone before
second recess. When I explained that I hadn't needed to at the time,
I was told that was my own fault, and afternoon teaching
commenced... And the burning
got worse and the bladder got tighter.
Forty-five minutes later, I raised my hand and waited for the teacher
to call on me. When she eventually did, I asked if I could go to the
bathroom, please, as I really needed too. She told me to
recount what she had previously told me on the matter, which I did,
and she assured me that there would be no exceptions and I was not to
bother her about it again. And so I sat, as the burning got worse
and the pressure got stronger.
In my adult years I would find out that I had a number of allergies
and intolerances and my body reacted differently to each one. Some
resulted in my body sending the allergen straight to my bladder where
it would burn until gotten rid of. In retrospect, I think this is
what was happening to me on this day of first grade. I likely ate
something at lunch which they didn't normally serve, it was in my
tummy during recess, then reached the intestines during nap and was
quickly sent to the bladder. But in first grade I didn't know any of
this as the burning became far beyond bearable and I was desperate
for relief.
Then it occurred to me that maybe I could pee a little. After
all I was wearing undies and it would surely absorb a little pee.
That would take the edge off the pressure, I could then wait until
the end of the school day to use the bathroom on the way to the bus.
Just if I peed... A little.
And so I did. Only to find that once the burning pee had started,
the rest didn't want to stay in the bladder. But I tried, I tried so
hard to stop. But once the undies were full, I could feel the
dampness running down my leg. First the thigh, then the back of the
calf to the sock and the sock lead to the shoe. And I started to
shake, realizing how much trouble I was going to get into and tried
so very hard to stop. But I couldn't until everything was out.
Pete raised his hand and was called on immediately and he told the
teacher what was happening. Perhaps it was a good guess on his part,
or perhaps he had watched my taut face and shaking and made a logical
deduction. Or it was likely the pee smell. Either way there
was yelling from the teacher, and the mother called-in to bring a
change of clothes. In the meantime the teacher allowed me to now go
to the bathroom, but there seemed little point as I was already
finished. Still, it allowed me a refuge to hide-in until my mother
arrived.
Then came the dreaded morning after and returning to school. I knew
that I was going to be made fun of and belittled for the rest of
first grade. In fact I knew that, in rural New England where
everybody knew everybody else, I would spend the rest of my life
known as the kid who'd peed in their pants in first grade. And I
slunk into the classroom the next day with my head held down and
silently took my seat.
And none of it happened. Instead there was a kerfuffle in
class as the teacher was missing. When the bell rang and class
should have been officially in session, the second grade teacher from
across the hall came over to us and told us to settle down as our
teacher was in the Principal's office. Pete then leaned over to me
and told me that when he told his father what had happened when he
got home last night, his father was very angry and called the
Principal about it. So had a number of other parents.
When the teacher did finally arrive at the room, red faced and angry,
we were told that her policy was that we were to use the bathroom
between recess and class or lunch and class, but if we
needed to use the bathroom at any other time... we could raise our
hands and ask. No one ever made fun of me. None of my
classmates ever brought it up again for the rest of my childhood.
The only person who ever brought it up again was my mother, years
later, when she told me of that day in the parking lot of the school
a week after first grade had ended.
As the Volkswagen bus heated up in the sun and I was alone and had
been told to stay in the bus, I wasn't sure what to do. It
eventually occurred to me to open the windows and vents, first one,
then the others. When that still wasn't enough, I noticed that the
bus was parked next to a tree and that tree was between the side door
of the bus and the front door of the school. I realized that I could
open the side door of the bus, sneak outside, and hide behind the
tree and wouldn't be seen. This worked and I was able to cool off.
When I heard the voices of my parents in the distance, I slipped back
into the bus and sat down as if I'd always been there.
As my mother told me some years later, it had been decided that the
first grade teacher would not continue at the school, and in
return she decided that I would not advance from first grade.
My parents were called in for a meeting about this. As my grades
hadn't been bad enough for me to be retained and, since the teacher
couldn't use the peeing incident as a sign of immaturity, she staked
her reasoning that I should be retained because I stuttered and
should be held back until I no longer did. If this line of
reasoning had been
followed, I would
still be in first grade
today. Instead my
mother told me how she valiantly fought against this until the school
backed her up. In reality, I learned later in life that my father
had been a childhood stutterer and most likely when the line of
reasoning had been brought up, he was the one to have been insulted
and most vehemently against retention.
But on that day, when my parents had reached the bus, they quietly
got in and told me I'd be going on to second grade. This was the
first and only time that my parents had stood up for me, that I
know of.
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