The First Assignment I Ever Blew Off Out Of Boredom

(But not the last...)

Continuing on the educational theme, I thought I'd tell you about one of my earliest run-ins with the educational system. For some reason it made a strong impression on me. It probably has something to do with my genetic predisposition toward holding a grudge. I was going to pop in a link there, but I haven't talked about it yet, so you'll have to take my word for it. It's closely tied to my family's genetic predisposition toward jackassery, as you may well imagine.

In any case, a little background: Kindergarten was optional in my school district, and because I was the last child (Surprise, Ma!), my mom decided to skip it so she could spend more time with me. Go figure...

So it came to pass in the first few days of first grade that my teacher gave a little pep talk to impress upon us the benefits of a public education. Her talk progressed in the vein of asking a series of rhetorical questions about things that we were unable to do, but would be able to do after first grade. You know, things like "How many of you could change a tire before you came to school?" or "How many of you could solve differential equations before you came to school?" or something along those lines... my memory grows dim. The one that sticks in my mind is when she asked "How many of you could read before you came to first grade."

I had not twigged to the fact that these were supposed to be rhetorical questions, so I raised my hand, prompting the kind of response that one normally associates with Dickensian stories about orphans and workhouses. In front of the whole class she snapped back that I most certainly could not read before I came to school, and proceeded to chew me out for interrupting her spiel.

I was taken aback, but because I was raised in a household where one did not tell grownups when they are acting like an ass, I held my tongue.

A few days later, we began doing assessments for reading and math placement and being able to walk along a board without falling off. I guess that last one was for P.E. placement. I never figured that one out. One of the tasks was, and I kid you not, to count as high as we possibly could. She made a big deal over the kid who first reached 100. And the second.

It came to my turn. I started counting. Around 20 or so, I realized how staggeringly pointless this was. I briefly considered explaining place values to her. However, given her reaction to the whole "I can already read" thing, I thought that bringing up "I already understand place values" would probably not go over well. I started wondering at what point I should stop counting. I don't recall my exact thought process, but I'm pretty sure that it went something like this: "I could keep going with this pointless excercise until I hit a hundred to get the praise that she'd given the other kids, or I could show everyone up and just count until she has to ask me to stop... or I could just stop now and spend the rest of the time until lunch thinking rude comments about the really dumb kids."

I stopped and sat down.

Now, one would think that she would have the grace to apologize for her outburst when the reading aptitude results came back. One would be wrong. However, she did borrow a reading book from the fifth graders and let me have my own reading group. It was the closest she came to admitting she was wrong.