On school days and such

I was just reading a friend's blog, he is one of the funniest people I know, and one of the deepest also. This entry was about being the fat kid in school and it really resonated with me - no, not from me being the fat kid, but how we are so shaped by our "educational" experiences.
I was not the fat kid, in fact, I was so skinny that my Grandmother gave me tonic to stimulate my appetite when I was a teen. I was almost always the new kid, there were 16 school changes in my sojourn from 1st to 12th grade, miraculously completed in the usual 12 years. Sometimes we moved so often the school records didn't keep up with us so my mom started getting them and hand carrying them to the new school.
School started for me in a one room building with six grades represented within the student body of 12 or 14 of us, many of whom were cousins of mine. Our teacher was Miss Dick, which was really difficult for a lisping 6 year old, and my dad would tease me by calling her Miss Stick because that's evidently how it sounded when I said it. It was super compounded the next year, when we moved to the new "big" school with 3 rooms, and went up to grade 7, and Miss Dick got married and became Mrs. Sinema. There is no mercy for little kids!
Isn't it funny what details you remember?
I did what most kids did at the time, took a lunch or walked home and ate. Pretty great actually compared to what I found out later about schools that had cafeterias.
In second grade, about halfway through the year, we moved from the lower mainland of rural B.C. to the rural north of Wisconsin. That was pretty blissful from a 7 year old viewpoint because my Mom taught me at home and I had a lot of time to play or read because I could complete everything as quickly as I wanted. There were many opportunities to skate on the street, build snow forts and funny kinds of igloos, and play with some kids who lived up the street and had a fox in in their yard (tied to a dog house). Back in those days they parked old cars on the river and made bets on when they would go through the ice. Can you even imagine doing that now?
There were so many moves after that it was hard to keep track for a while, we went to the north west Washington peninsula, then back to the first school for a half year each, then it went crazy, hopping all over - Texas, Washington, Tennessee, Oregon, Kentucky, Washington, Oklahoma, until finally to start junior high in school number 15 in central Washington. And, we stayed, for three years!!
You can't possibly imagine how horrible that is, unless you have been the new kid 14 times, and don't know how to stay anywhere. I had kind of gotten used to the rudeness of teachers, assuming since I started in Canada or moved so often I must be behind whatever level my mother was saying I need to be assigned to . Or, assuming since we often rented mobile homes, that we were "trailer trash" and treating us accordingly. Fortunately, I was up to or ahead of the pack academically, so didn't end up being put back anywhere.
The venality of some teachers couldn't compare to the ability of children to be absolutely horrible, from the casual snubs because you are new or have funny clothes, to the deliberately mean and vicious.
At least I wasn't fat, I had glasses by grade 3, was a head taller than the other kids and a penchant for weird clothes (that was mostly in Jr high and high school when one of my mom's friends gave me her cast offs, most of which were designer duds - very stylish if you were 30 something and lived in a big city, not so much if you were 13 and living in some totally backward trash heap - but they fit).
Jr. High was in a lovely summer resort town, the redeeming factors were having a lake, a horse, a dog and a friend. We lived 100 yards from the lake and had so much freedom. On non school days, we left the house in the morning and came in for meals and since there was a party line that all the moms used to call us in if they needed us, no one cared.
I had just kind of adjusted to staying and another mid-year Christmas time move happened - on to school 16. Good God, it was beyond belief: small minded, bigoted, primitive, over-religious, sanctimonious, you name it, it was there. And, a ferocious mean-ness for anyone not of the in-bred local clan. The decent, kind and considerate were so rare they still stand out in memory. The best thing from high school happened in my senior year, just before I dropped out, we got a new music teacher. He was a phenom, and brought a life long love of music to a new level with skill and humor. He became friends with the whole family and we still see him.
Since we moved many times outside of the school year also, by the time I was 20 I had 61 addresses.
When I look at the rare pictures of me from then I am amazed. I don't look at all like the image I had of me. I had always thought I was a big, clumsy, ugly kid. Evidently not, but I've been trying to get over that ever since.
More later on the fat kid stuff and weight.....