ON QUITTING SCHOOL

"A Tree Grows in Moonlight"
By: Skitch

THEN:

WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
SCHOOL WAS PAINFUL:

Though I have long considered myself an autodidact, the foundation for my education came from public school. It was there that I learned to read and there that I discovered my fierce love for literature, my penchant for science, and my weakness toward mathematics. Letters have always been my friends. Numbers were, until fourth grade and then they seemed suddenly to desert me. Whatever the reason, numbers scare me. Perhaps, as a psychiatrist once told me, this was due to some malformation in my decidedly odd little brain. Perhaps it was more akin to what my husband Olin claims. He says I have a deficiency in the foundation of my mathematics learning, and that the blame for this lies solely on the shoulders of one or more of my earliest math teachers.

I was disliked by several teachers, though I wanted to be loved by them, and I did as I was told. I was unpopular in the first elementary school that I attended, and I was disallowed any extra curricular activities by my parents. Thus, the only sport I participated in was bully dodging. I gave my formal education very little effort for several years in order to be more like my parents and less like a person that might abandon them by "getting above my raising." This was an idea so deeply planted in my head that I could not have put it into words for you then or even years later. It was almost thirty years after it began to rear it's ugly head that I finally saw it for what it was.

I did enjoy three years at a different, far better elementary school. I'm not sure how the school got that way, but I can tell you what made it so superior: simply put, it was a sense of togetherness. Yes, this school had it's cliques. The jocks hung out largely with other jocks. The nerds hung out mostly with other nerds. But the groups did not prey on each other and they looked at each other as simply different branches of the same tree. They shared a loyalty to their school and to their classmates that I'd never seen before or after. I remember sitting between a "nerd" and a "jock" in one particular classroom. I proudly called both of them my friends. They were nice to me and to each other. The three of us talked quietly when given permission and passed notes when silence was called for. When the recess bell rang Stuart went to play football with his friends and Scott sat on the sidelines with his, going over plans for the upcoming science fair or talking about some other cerebral pursuit. Most of us had a good idea which kids came from privilege and which ones did not, but no one ever made a big deal about money. It was an afterthought. In fact, when I once mentioned food stamps to Stuart he was surprised. "I thought you were one of the rich kids," He told me. This prompted me to wonder about my new found contentment. Were the kids in this school being kind to me because they thought I was rich? Did all rich kids enjoy this sort of sweet acceptance from other students? The questions pouring through my head encouraged me to pay more attention, and I soon realized that I need not be concerned. Not only did Stuart's kindness never waiver, even now that he knew I certainly was not a rich kid, but it seemed to work across the board. The jocks and the kids who came from money were largely nice to the kids that, without one doubt, did not come from privilege. I don't mean to make this school sound like a utopia. It was not. We had kids that leaned toward being bullies, just not entire groups of bullies as I'd confronted before. The incidents with bullying were rare and most often the other kids would defend whomever the bully was set against. This was usually one of more of the guys in my grade. Stuart helped me put a few bullies in their place over the years. So did Clint, and Joey. This warmed my heart because none of these guys were big or tall and the bullies often were. It was like being threatened by a wolf and watching while a fox ran it off. Of course my friends Nancy and Michelle stuck by me when bullies tried to establish dominance, and my classmate, April spoke up and took my part many times when a high school girl on our bus tried to push me around. I returned the favor and suddenly neither of us had to worry about any of the bullies on the bus, though the high school was much more peppered with them than our elementary school was. I was not as close to April as I was to Nancy or Michelle. April and I were something between acquaintances and friends. We rarely sat together on the bus, often we were yards apart, but as soon as one of us heard the other begin to raise her voice in agitation, we were on the move. Suddenly, the bully that thought they could push our friend around found that he or she would have to push much harder than they had anticipated. They were staring at two little spitfires instead of one. Always, it became more trouble than it was worth for the bully. There really was safety in numbers. 

When I entered the eighth grade, I was shuffled out of my pleasant elementary school to the high school. Neither of the elementary schools were big enough to house the eighth graders but the high school, with it's significant drop out rate, had plenty of room. So, though we weren't formally high school students, the eighth grade kids were sent to the high school. There they would merge my friends and the kids from the elementary school that I had gone to previously, the one that was rank with cliques that did prey on each other and bullies that went largely unchallenged. My group still stuck together as much as possible, but we were outnumbered. Not only were we only half of the eighth graders, but we were in an high school that was populated with many, many kids that had come from my first elementary school, and we were suddenly on the bottom of the rank, guppies and goldfish in an ocean rank with sharks and barracudas. Eighth graders were the runts and the butt of most of the jokes, often cruel ones. I was pushed into lockers, threatened, and sexually assaulted. With the advent of sexuality in the mix (the previous bullying had be rather asexual) I soon found myself more frustrated with school than I had ever been. I was miserable.


WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
WESLEY:

My cousin, Wesley had moved in with my family, telling me he would be the brother I'd never had! This was exciting and wonderful for me because I had always wanted a brother. He was nine years older than me and had been honorable discharged after a full term in the U.S. Army. I admired him very much. Wes had a job as an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant and he told me, "If you'll quit school, I can get you a job with me!" He wrote out on paper approximately what I would make each paycheck and budgeted it out for me. He showed me that I could give a certain amount to my parents (to improve the lives of everyone in the family) put some back for my own future, and still have a considerable amount of money to spend on whatever I wanted right now! I'd never imagined I might someday have a steady stream of money for whatever struck my fancy and suddenly an entire world of dreams was opened up in my head. What if I could afford to get my learners permit? Maybe even a used car in a few years? Might I be able to take home a piece of "real" jewelry now and then, something silver or even gold? And get my hair cut often enough that it did not look like a crazy cat lady's head? And buy Nike shoes? I'd had one pair that my family caught on clearance and I loved Nike shoes! My feet had never felt more comfortable in any pair of shoes and my soul had felt so normal looking down at them. I was maybe as good as anyone else, right? Wesley seemed to have thought of everything as he figured in lunches and gas money and said I could car pool with him, that his boss would match our schedules. I was thoroughly beguiled by the idea.

"You can get your GED in a few years and go on to college. No sense wasting the next four years in high school when you could be making money! Sure, a high school degree is better than a GED but if you go on to college no one will ever care that you have a GED instead." He was very convincing and I was so unhappy with high school.


WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN:

A dear friend of the family, Liz Rose, told me that I very much reminded her of "Francie", a character from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which was one of her favorite novels.

"Have you ever read that book?" She asked.

She knew I was an avid reader and when she found out I had not read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", she somehow found me a copy. This was before the internet and before the large chain book stores. In fact, I'd never been in a book store of any sort in my entire life, so I have no idea where or how Liz found that book. Likely, she gave me a copy she'd had on her bookshelf for decades. I gratefully accepted it. Books were my favorite gifts. I was intrigued by almost every novel and more so by this one, since I had been compared to the main character. I loved the girl's name. It reminded me of my grandmother's: Frankie. I had never met my dad's mother and had long felt that loss. Maybe this girl would be spunky like everyone told me my grandmother had been.

I sucked the contents of the book down in hours and it became my favorite novel, my favorite book (other than the Bible) and it still is. 

Francie was spunky, and she was a lot like me. She had a love of books and learning that ran deep to her soul. She adored her daddy and struggled to understand her mother. She suffered from poverty and dreamed of overcoming it. She wanted to help her family improve their lot. At her mother's insistence, Francie quit school to get a job. I could see me being the salvation of my family, so "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" was the final straw in the high school camel's back. I wanted to drop out. This would essentially mean skipping high school, as eight graders were not even freshmen yet.


THE ACTUAL FACTS OF THE MATTER:

I told my parents I was quitting school, and I braced myself to drown out my oldest sister's plaintive objections. I talked my dad into taking me to see the superintendent and telling him that I was not coming back after Christmas break. Talking him into this course of action was not only disappointingly easy (though I'm not sure why I expected more resistance from my parents who had quit school in the fifth grade (Dad) and the sixth (Mom) but it turned out to also be quite a blow to my ego. My pop told the superintendent, "She's never really done well in school anyway. She's slow." I had been told by so many teachers that I was plenty smart enough, even as cleaver as any kid they had ever taught, so this was a shocking revelation! Were they all lying to me? Did they say that to all the kids? Surely my pop would know if I was below average intellect! I never knew if my dad truly believed I was mentally deficient or if he said it to get the paper signed. I know he would not tell an outright lie, but he has always had this way of beating around a bush and of finishing sentences under his breath. He might have said, "She's a bit slow," and then breathed, "Getting out of bed in the morning." I will simply say, I would not put either idea past him!

I quit school that day and I wondered about my mental ability for many years.

Wesley moved out of our house soon afterward, and no job was handed to me. I turned out to have a big case of "Teenager" and was too lazy to pursue one very well on my own. I found a babysitting job for a few months, I worked in a gift shop for a short time, and I wrote an advice column for the local paper. I made one dollar an hour in the gift shop and she paid me in merchandise, going by the full marked up price. I came home with some nick knack every two or three days. I made no cash there and so little money at the other two jobs, that my dad refused to take a penny of it to help with the family expenses. Jobs were extremely hard to find in my little town unless you "knew someone who knew someone" and we did not know anyone with the power or authority to find me a job. I know now that I should have tried harder, should have found something more substantial or, better yet, endured the misery and the bullies and kept my butt in school while finding an after school job.

What I largely did was read fiction and watch MTV. In my defense, I must point out that this was back in the day when MTV was truly music videos and was worth watching, unlike the sludge they show today. I also learned more from the fiction than one might imagine. Without planning to, I put my life on a nocturnal shift. Most of the time I was "between jobs" and I stayed up all night reading Kathleene E. Woodiwiss, and Johanna Lindsey, and Lavyrle Spencer. I found the silence and the night beguiling and fell under it's dark spell. I had never been allowed to stay all night away from home, to participate in after school activities, to be left alone without either my parents or my sister to "watch me". Other than going on walks, I had never been entirely alone and yet I knew this truth: My soul loves solitude and craves silence. My mother listened to the Christian radio station every hour she was awake, which was usually five to eight hours a day. My dad watched one television and my sister (if I wasn't watching MTV) watched the other one. When Wesley was living there, he was often listening to music in the kitchen or the living room on his portable boom box. We lived in a shotgun house with only one interior door, which was on the bathroom, a bathroom that did not have a commode. We used an outhouse for those functions. The bathroom was simply for bathing. When my mother was sleeping the house was forcefully, oppressively silent. Even whispering was often frowned upon. It was a study in extremes, but I preferred the silence. The cacophony felt like torture. The silence was merely strained. For a while I kept my cot in the walk in closet. After the bed was moved back into the bedroom I shared with Sandi, I put an old couch in the closet and turned it's back away from the wall. This was even better than the cot because it created a box for me to hide in to try to escape some of the noise. I slept there sometimes. Once I had reversed my days and nights, I imagined it was a coffin and that I was a vampire.

Often my home felt like a prison that trapped me with sound and nervousness. The doctor had put me on several nerve pills due to mouth ulcers, sever stomach aches that woke me in the middle of the night, and a bad case of Shingles at the age of fourteen. I found peace in my sleeping home. I absorbed my sister's even breaths, the sound of the crickets outside, and the lulling of the box fan. I sighed deep, happy sighs, and I swore there was more oxygen in the night air. I rarely fell asleep before the sun rose, and before I went to sleep I would often position the box fan near my head. That way I could sleep through all the household goings on during the day. I would wake up around 3pm and soon after that eat supper, instead of breakfast, with my family. They had fallen into the habit of eating at 3:30 because I had always arrived home from school saying I was starving. Suppertime had been moved up for my convenience. My family loved me very much and I loved them just as heartily. We simply had trouble understanding each other sometimes.

These days I spend a lot of time listening to the gentle hum of my computer or the rain outside my window, while contemplating nearly everything, including my past, future, and present. I truly bless the broken road that got me right where I am today. I need and love my sons. I adore my husband. I'm happy with my own quirky blend of knowledge and the hard earned wisdom I've managed to acquire. But if I knew then what I know now, I would have done my best to plow through with high school and so much more. I would have given a formal education my all from day one to, at least, a master's degree, and I would not have continued to do what I've always done, never stopped teaching myself. I did learn a lot about myself and life from those years of bad jobs and late nights. It is possible that knowing yourself is even more important than having a good formal education, but I have confidence that I could have handled both. In fact, fighting for a formal education while being a troubled teen, while married to my first husband, while raising my boys might have taught me even more about myself and life, might have given me a higher degree from the school of hard knocks. I am not at all discontent with where I am today, but wouldn't I love to have a rewarding career to go along with my awesome husband and cool progeny!

My advice to all: Stay in school! Learn to teach yourself as well, and never stop learning. You will be amazed to find that you can be your favorite teacher if you only give yourself a chance.