school in Snippets

I never went far in school. I hated school. I hated the teachers(there were two I liked) and the kids hated me. I passed Grade 5 but never got farther than that. You can't go to school as a runaway. I spent a lot of my childhood running away. If you go to school then you get pinched by your social worker, who when she called to inform the school you would be absent because you ran away last night, has been told you are in classes. So I never went back to school as a runaway after that. Grade 1 the teacher taped my mouth shut and tied me in my desk with skipping rope.... They were allowed to do that back then. Grade 2 I got the strap cause one of the kids said I was looking up girls skirts. It wasn't true but I got the strap 5 times on each hand with a leather strap. Grade 3 I liked this teacher. She made a fort in the back of the class and told me anytime I needed to be alone to go to the fort and color or read or nap. This was a really hard year for me. Grade 4 My teacher was also my sunday school teacher. I liked her til this year. Again it was a hard year. Grade 5. My teacher called me a chink in front of the whole class. I called him snufflelufagus because of his big nose. I got the strap and detention. Apparently calling kids racial slurs was also allowed but being rude to teachers was not. I got the strap 11 times that year. Surprisingly I never went back for a sixth year. Grade six never happened. Again it was a tough year. The teacher who would have taught me grade six died of cancer in the summer. She was a great friend and I used to go over to her house and have tea and listen to classical music. I miss her