Warped, at Best

In case anyone wonders how I got to be so warped, here's a little background. I grew up in a loving but misguided family. In most ways, my parents provided all the neccessities for us to grow up & become productive members of society. There was just one shortcoming in our childhoods & I plan to showcase it here.

We lived in a quaint city neighborhood where my parents had been raised & everyone attended the local Catholic school. When mom & dad were kids, that was all well & good but by my time, the church school left a lot to be desired.

The first few years were fine but then things became somewhat questionable. By the time I was in the 4th grade, I knew I was in trouble. My teacher that year (we'll call her Linda K.) wasn't as smart as most of the children she was supposed to be teaching.

In particular she was critical of an essay I'd written, lecturing me at great length that there's no such word as "soam-ee-own". Concerned with retribution, I didn't bother to point out that the word was "someone". But I think she resented my tact even more because she was always really snotty after that . . .

By 5th grade, most of the real teachers had left to work at real schools so things just got worse. Important subjects like science were only taught on monday, wednesday & friday but nobody seemed to think it was a big deal. Art was a "treat" reserved for holidays & was generally just an hour of lame crafts.

Music was no longer on the horizon. After an unsuccessful attempt to bring all students K-8 into the cafeteria & teach us all to play the recorder, we just never spoke of it again. (To this day, I'm not sure if that's really an instrument per se or if it's more on par with the kazoo & those little whistles that sound like a dentists' drill.)

Phys Ed was also a "treat" & was denied to those who had broken any rules, as detention of some sort would require the inept administration to stay in the building after classes ended.

We had English "teachers" who said things like, "I don't want to hear none of that 'I ain't got my homework' crap," and made gratuitous use of the double negative.

While the rest of the world delights in watching The Simpsons, I shudder at times when Springfield Elementary's administrative failures hit just a little too close to home.

There's much more to come & it's even better than this. I swear I'm not making any of this up. It was an actual school & people paid good money to send their children to it! I have friends that attended other Catholic schools in the area, but mine seems to have been unique in so many ways, I can't even begin to list them all.