What Accounts For Things, I Wonder!!!!!!!

Some of you who just read my previous post may wonder how on earth I ever got this way. At this point in my middle age it is certainly unfashionable to blame things on one's parents--hell by the time we reach our forties we have hopefully moved beyond that, as, parents or not, we see through others of our own generation, what our parents had to go through and that it was not so easy. And while my parents did so many right things--guiding me to "The Wizard Of Oz", darlings (an act they came later to regret), keeping me out of Catholic school, and instilling in me the manners of a Miss Porter's graduate, there was just one tiny thing involving my education on which they went amiss.

Now, you have to understand, in the suburbia--WHITE suburubia, honey--of another era, there were three elementary schools in the town I grew up. The one that was actually in our district was considered the best by far, and all the socially prominent families sent their children there. So for kindegarten, I was rightly enrolled there. BUT, being the brillilant, unconventional child I already was, showing evidence of the adult I was later to become, kindegarten and I did not take kindly to each other, resulting in my being held back a year. At the age of 6, this meant nothing to me, and for reasons I was then too young to understand, my parents took it pretty hard. Me, I just blithely went about my summer, playing, not really thinking about school, but knowing full well that come Fall I would be back in the same school in the same classroom, with a new set of classmates. Big deal.

About three weeks before school started, I was informed that I would NOT be returning to the school I had been to the year before, with which I was already familiar. I was being sent to what turned out to be the worst of the three schools in the community, a fact I discovered on the very first day, when the teacher clearly demonstrated that she was a witch who should not be dealing with children, still bears the distinction of being the ONLY teacher who ever made me cry, and clearly HATED what she was doing!!!! How much did I learn? Nothing!!!! How much did I know? A lot more than my classmates, who even at this early age my snob instincts could recognize as being intellectually and socio-economically inferior to me. For this, I disovered was where the dumb children from the Wrong Side of the Tracks were sent, like Linda Johnson, whose mother was a waitress, for God's sake, and who to this day thinks (Linda, I mean, that food from New Jersey is the greatest! I mean, what the hell is wrong with these people). But what could you expect of people who lived in the section of town known as Goat Alley, where blue collar workers and waitresses lived, and whose daughters were gulping pencillin by the time they reached puberty. THIS is what my parents saw fit to expose me to???? Just because kindegarten did not work out the first time? Who were they punishing--me or themselves????

It turned out it felt more like me being punished, because in First Grade my teacher hated the fact that I could read better than anyone in the class, wanted homework, and berated me when I attempted my version of cursive writing, thinking she would understand and then correctly try to teach me. The rest of my years were this way--teachers who wanted to keep me at a certain level, wanting me to read juvenalia, when I was ready for Dickens and Melville!!!
Yes, darlings!!!!!

And the result of all this!!!! Social stigmatization! Because of where I was sent, by the time all the school convened in Junior High, I was placed below where I should have been, denied Algebra in the 8th Grade even though I had the grades, with the same thing happening in high school with Honor Society, though I was a whirlwind on the paper, in the choir and onstage!!!!!
Not even encouraged to take AP English, where I showed them up in college by being omitted from Freshman English after only 3 weeks. And not having needed to take it at all!!!!! So fuck you to the first twelve years!!!!!!!

The end result of course was low self-esteem which permeated into career marginality simply because my parents made the mistake of sending me to the wrong school. But chickens come home to roost, bitches, and boy this bitch is getting back at things now!!!! How do you like THEM apples--Mrs. Compton, Mrs, Cohen, Mrs. Beinhower, Mrs. Brodsky, Mrs. Behmer, Goat Alley, and Linda Johnson?????

Now, don't we feel better, girls! You bet!

Back to being decent and fine and PURE like Amy Adams!!!!!!