Third Grade Karma.......................

I am working as a camp counselor this summer and have not worked this physically hard since I was twenty-one. After week one of the Summer Camp Program, it made want to sleep for a couple of days. I realized that Karma is real. I have a class of third graders, and it made me think of how I was in third grade. In 1972 at Stewart Elementary school, I was in Mrs. Orr and Mr. Curry's classes. Mrs. Orr could wield a ruler better than a Catholic School nun, and Mr. Curry who tried to be our buddy, thought we wanted to listen to him read from the book, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The movie with Gene Wilder had came out at that time, and most of the class knew that we were not going to see that movie because our folks did not have the money. My buddy in that class was guy named Dewayne and there was Steven, another guy who was more of a hanger-on because Dewayne lived around the corner from him.

Although I only visited their houses on the way to school, I could tell that Dewayne's father's did pop him a lot, and Steven's mother was a older woman who was a stay-at-home mom also. Dewayne was a comical guy, and kept us in stitches. He had me rolling when he told me how his parents' bed would sound when they were having sex. Steven, on the other hand, was somewhat of a loner, also a bit of bully that no one really wanted to be around that gravitated to us. I tolerated him because he seemed to keep folks off of Dewayne who was a petite guy, somewhat a little feminine, that could verbally cut up a person and was a comeback master, at least to me at that time.

The main incident that got all three of us a paddling, was when we went to the King Kay's candy store during lunch recess. King Kay's was supposed to be the mega candy store of the neighborhood, and I wanted to see for myself since I lived in the opposite direction. Dwayne had the ideal and money for us to go, and I was all for it, although it was two blocks from the school on Linwood. Since we went home from lunch and staff did not allow those that went home to play on the field with those that ate lunch at school, we figured if we ate lunch quickly and went straight there, we would make it back in time for the afternoon session. But we forgot that the office window of our Principal Mrs. Samatica, who was a little short and stout Middle Eastern lady, faced the field and she saw us. We were able to go quickly to King Kay's and get our candy and made it back in time for the tardy bell. But when she called us out of our class an hour later, I knew that we were in trouble. My younger brother who had accompanied us on the trip was not called. She demanded all our candy and wore out our hands with the plexi-glass paddle that she carried. It was so embarrassing and humiliating later as some of our classmates made fun of us. One respite from the incident was that half of my candy stash was hidden in my boot and I shared it with my conspirators as we walked home from school.

I had a couple of disputes with Steven, with the last one ending up with us fighting on a stairway and me kicking him in the mouth. Back then, at times I thought Steven was crazy, especially during that fight. Mr. Curry was taking us to the field to play baseball, and informed the class that if our behavior did not improve, we would sit through several sessions of gym. I think we had wore out his last nerve, and given that ultimatum, I definitely did not want to be locked down sitting in the gym for an entire hour during hot weather. As our class descended down the stairs, Steven stopped the middle of the line before the next landing with me behind him, and started howling like a wolf. My other classmates and I hissed at him to be quiet, but he would not stop. I finally pushed him down to the stair landing, and he came back at me. Realizing that Steve was furious, I just reacted. As Steven lunged at me, I kicked wildly with my foot landing on his face busting his lip, and knocking him back to the landing.

Luckily for me, Mr. Curry made it back to the stairway in time as Steven looking like a ferocious wolf, came back swinging at me. Usually a mild mannered man, Mr. Curry almost lost it as he grabbed Steven and hauled him back off of me. Maybe it was the tension or relief that Mr. Curry came to to my rescue, or seeing him grab Steven with such force that I broke down in tears. Mr. Curry ordered the class back to the gym, which did not sit well with our classmates who blamed the entire incident on the both of us. After making inquires of the classmates that witnessed the incident, he called Steven's mother who came and got him. I was surprised to see Steven, who usually was a stoic person when he was in trouble, in tears before she arrived. I expected to be written up also, but Mr. Curry did not do so. I guess that he understood my frustration with Steven and excused my actions. Or he maybe already knew that my folks would beat the mess out of me if informed of the situation. When Steven returned from his exclusion, we never had another confrontation. He was usually quiet, and I avoided interactioen with him. Dwayne moved that summer and when our Fourth Grade semester started, Steven and I were put in diffrent classes. I moved the next year and around twenty years later in 1989 or 1990, I saw Dwayne's obituary in the newspaper. He had been a dance teacher and there was a nice write up about him. I wondered then what had happened to Steven, but I hoped that he was happier than that angry boy that he was back then.