My elementary education was divided between two schools. I started
out at Crown Hill Elementary in North Seattle (conveniently located at
the top of … (wait for it…) Crown Hill.)
When I was a kid (by this, I mean “less than 18 years old”) I thrived on comic books, the Star Wars trilogy, Battlestar Galactica (classic) and Star Blazers. (After I turned 18, all these things thrived on me.) Ostensibly, my life was not dictated by the books I was assigned by my teachers, but rather by the books I loved to read on my own.
OK, maybe “thrive” is a strong word, but it is safe to say that Marvel and DC comics, George Lucas, Glen Larson and a handful of nameless Japanese animators each had a hand in my upbringing.
I have not particularly benefited from this monetarily (and nary a single thank you note from Stan Lee, George Lucas or that tiny island nation of Japan.) Nor have I been bitten by a radioactive spider, been bombarded by cosmic rays. I was never presented with my father’s lightsaber nor have I fired a “wave motion gun.” (Yet.)
Educationally, kindergarten through third grade breezed by for me, as I easily earned straight “A” grades (back when you still got letter grades.) My teachers allowed me to wander freely about the classroom (read: they didn’t notice me wandering freely about the classroom.) They let me write short stories and then read them to the class as book reports.
The fact is: I wasted a lot of my time whiling — or is that meanwhiling— away my time, hoping that some radioactive frog would crash through my window, bite me and unleash my mutant super powers.
“The Mighty ThunderFrog! Amphibian Avenger!” Faster than a speeding turnip truck, more powerful than a Volkswagen, able to leap tall buildings without a sound! It’s a burp, it’s a belch…it’s ThunderFrog!”
My secret lair would be the Lily Pad. My battle croak: “I’m hopping mad!”
And of course…I would only use my powers for the forces of good. Truth, Justice and the Amphibian Way!
Then again, with my luck (living in the Pacific Northwest) I would more likely be bitten by a radioactive moose (Mighty Moose.), skunk (The Striped Avenger), or a salmon (GLUB! The Caped Coho!)
Alas, I was doomed to a life of normalcy. OK, ‘normal’ is a misnomer in my case. By ‘normal’ I mean I never got to fight crime until I became a police dispatcher for a short time in my late 20s, and again as a casino Security Officer where I spent most of my time battling the evil forces of ‘Second-Hand Smoke.’
Where was I? Oh yeah… writing short stories and reading them for book report credit in third grade.
I used to include my classmates in the stories I wrote. My stories were about a young superhero called “Adventure Kid,” who had all sorts of adventures… as a kid. He was always a year younger than me, but could lift an amazing 100 lbs!
My classmates were his companions in the adventures. Typically all the boys in the class would team up with Adventure Kid to rescue all the females in the class who would be captured by some sinister force or other.
When I was writing, many of my classmates became my biggest fans. (OK, by this, I mean that... while I was writing, many of my classmates came to tolerate me.
But I got a taste of power while I was writing. If someone did something to offend me, (which happened easily with my frail ego structure,) I would threaten to take him or her out of my story. This usually got them to treat me nicely.
In retrospect, I now understand that this was a manipulative form of abuse. Powerful, but effective. (I didn’t master it until much later in life.)
Fourth grade was a little tougher. Crown Hill elementary had two fourth grade teachers. One was known as a strict disciplinarian who was merciless in her maniacal pursuit of filling young minds with all the important information about Greek, Roman and Norse gods, and how to write Roman numerals to the million-billions. The other teacher was a man, and hence would have been my first male teacher.
I got the female, who was a “sink-or-swim” kind of person. No more skating by on short stories for book report credit.Then my school closed, and I was sent to a new school.
…where I got the same teacher for fifth grade. More Roman gods and numerals, more Greek gods and the like. I did not flourish.
My sixth grade teacher was a kind, “tough-love” sort of man. My first male teacher, he taught us a lot about self-respect. He also taught us some rudimentary Italian. He told us he was 63 years old. He said he’d gotten to 100 and then started counting backwards again.
A few years ago, his son was almost elected governor of Washington State. I voted for him, not because I thought he had a better plan or “mandate”, but because I figured; if his father could have such a huge impact on an attention-starved 11-year-old in just 180 days, he should have been an incredible influence on his own offspring.
Something happened in sixth grade. One day our teacher said “ You should appreciate my doing this for you. Once you get to middle school, you’re gonna be on your own.” (I don’t remember what he was explaining.)
I entered middle school with trepidation. Was it really going to be as cutthroat as Mr. Rossi described? In many ways it was: expectations were definitely higher. You had to learn to fend for yourself. I spent most of my time in the computer lab, programming in “Basic” on ancient PET 2001 computers. (Based upon the fact you haven’t heard of “CreelmanSoft,” you can see how far I got with that.)
Then one day, my eighth grade social studies teacher said: “ You know, you people should appreciate what I’m doing for you here. When you get to high school, you’ll have to fend for yourselves.” (I don’t remember what he was doing for me there.)
High school was definitely a step up. I struggled with keeping grades up, even though I was always in the top three percentile on standardized tests. (This was when my novel series “Phoenix Flight” first saw the light of day. I was always busy writing and drawing rather than studying.)
During my senior year of high school, one teacher warned us that in college, teachers were not nearly as helpful.
“I hope you guys appreciate everything we do for you here,” he said. “Once you’re in college, nobody is going to look out for you!” (I don’t remember what he was doing for us.)
At the community college level, I struggled through my freshman year and then sputtered through what I call my “five sophomore years of college.”
Eventually I got back fulltime, and finally flourished again.
One of my instructors advised me one day that, “at 4-year schools, nobody’s going to wipe your nose for you.” (I do specifically recall that this instructor never physically wiped my nose. I wouldn’t have ever forgotten something like that.)
As I slogged my way through Washington State University, I indeed wiped my own nose, except for the times I allowed some exchange student majoring in biology to do it for me, but that was just ten or twelve times.
And, I swear this is true, my communication history professor said to my senior class: “You should appreciate what we do here, When you get into the workforce…”
Sadly, I don’t remember what any of them “did…”
…except make lasting, lifelong impressions on me.
Oh, and I do get to capitalize on it by writing about it, years later.
When I was a kid (by this, I mean “less than 18 years old”) I thrived on comic books, the Star Wars trilogy, Battlestar Galactica (classic) and Star Blazers. (After I turned 18, all these things thrived on me.) Ostensibly, my life was not dictated by the books I was assigned by my teachers, but rather by the books I loved to read on my own.
OK, maybe “thrive” is a strong word, but it is safe to say that Marvel and DC comics, George Lucas, Glen Larson and a handful of nameless Japanese animators each had a hand in my upbringing.
I have not particularly benefited from this monetarily (and nary a single thank you note from Stan Lee, George Lucas or that tiny island nation of Japan.) Nor have I been bitten by a radioactive spider, been bombarded by cosmic rays. I was never presented with my father’s lightsaber nor have I fired a “wave motion gun.” (Yet.)
Educationally, kindergarten through third grade breezed by for me, as I easily earned straight “A” grades (back when you still got letter grades.) My teachers allowed me to wander freely about the classroom (read: they didn’t notice me wandering freely about the classroom.) They let me write short stories and then read them to the class as book reports.
The fact is: I wasted a lot of my time whiling — or is that meanwhiling— away my time, hoping that some radioactive frog would crash through my window, bite me and unleash my mutant super powers.
“The Mighty ThunderFrog! Amphibian Avenger!” Faster than a speeding turnip truck, more powerful than a Volkswagen, able to leap tall buildings without a sound! It’s a burp, it’s a belch…it’s ThunderFrog!”
My secret lair would be the Lily Pad. My battle croak: “I’m hopping mad!”
And of course…I would only use my powers for the forces of good. Truth, Justice and the Amphibian Way!
Then again, with my luck (living in the Pacific Northwest) I would more likely be bitten by a radioactive moose (Mighty Moose.), skunk (The Striped Avenger), or a salmon (GLUB! The Caped Coho!)
Alas, I was doomed to a life of normalcy. OK, ‘normal’ is a misnomer in my case. By ‘normal’ I mean I never got to fight crime until I became a police dispatcher for a short time in my late 20s, and again as a casino Security Officer where I spent most of my time battling the evil forces of ‘Second-Hand Smoke.’
Where was I? Oh yeah… writing short stories and reading them for book report credit in third grade.
I used to include my classmates in the stories I wrote. My stories were about a young superhero called “Adventure Kid,” who had all sorts of adventures… as a kid. He was always a year younger than me, but could lift an amazing 100 lbs!
My classmates were his companions in the adventures. Typically all the boys in the class would team up with Adventure Kid to rescue all the females in the class who would be captured by some sinister force or other.
When I was writing, many of my classmates became my biggest fans. (OK, by this, I mean that... while I was writing, many of my classmates came to tolerate me.
But I got a taste of power while I was writing. If someone did something to offend me, (which happened easily with my frail ego structure,) I would threaten to take him or her out of my story. This usually got them to treat me nicely.
In retrospect, I now understand that this was a manipulative form of abuse. Powerful, but effective. (I didn’t master it until much later in life.)
Fourth grade was a little tougher. Crown Hill elementary had two fourth grade teachers. One was known as a strict disciplinarian who was merciless in her maniacal pursuit of filling young minds with all the important information about Greek, Roman and Norse gods, and how to write Roman numerals to the million-billions. The other teacher was a man, and hence would have been my first male teacher.
I got the female, who was a “sink-or-swim” kind of person. No more skating by on short stories for book report credit.Then my school closed, and I was sent to a new school.
…where I got the same teacher for fifth grade. More Roman gods and numerals, more Greek gods and the like. I did not flourish.
My sixth grade teacher was a kind, “tough-love” sort of man. My first male teacher, he taught us a lot about self-respect. He also taught us some rudimentary Italian. He told us he was 63 years old. He said he’d gotten to 100 and then started counting backwards again.
A few years ago, his son was almost elected governor of Washington State. I voted for him, not because I thought he had a better plan or “mandate”, but because I figured; if his father could have such a huge impact on an attention-starved 11-year-old in just 180 days, he should have been an incredible influence on his own offspring.
Something happened in sixth grade. One day our teacher said “ You should appreciate my doing this for you. Once you get to middle school, you’re gonna be on your own.” (I don’t remember what he was explaining.)
I entered middle school with trepidation. Was it really going to be as cutthroat as Mr. Rossi described? In many ways it was: expectations were definitely higher. You had to learn to fend for yourself. I spent most of my time in the computer lab, programming in “Basic” on ancient PET 2001 computers. (Based upon the fact you haven’t heard of “CreelmanSoft,” you can see how far I got with that.)
Then one day, my eighth grade social studies teacher said: “ You know, you people should appreciate what I’m doing for you here. When you get to high school, you’ll have to fend for yourselves.” (I don’t remember what he was doing for me there.)
High school was definitely a step up. I struggled with keeping grades up, even though I was always in the top three percentile on standardized tests. (This was when my novel series “Phoenix Flight” first saw the light of day. I was always busy writing and drawing rather than studying.)
During my senior year of high school, one teacher warned us that in college, teachers were not nearly as helpful.
“I hope you guys appreciate everything we do for you here,” he said. “Once you’re in college, nobody is going to look out for you!” (I don’t remember what he was doing for us.)
At the community college level, I struggled through my freshman year and then sputtered through what I call my “five sophomore years of college.”
Eventually I got back fulltime, and finally flourished again.
One of my instructors advised me one day that, “at 4-year schools, nobody’s going to wipe your nose for you.” (I do specifically recall that this instructor never physically wiped my nose. I wouldn’t have ever forgotten something like that.)
As I slogged my way through Washington State University, I indeed wiped my own nose, except for the times I allowed some exchange student majoring in biology to do it for me, but that was just ten or twelve times.
And, I swear this is true, my communication history professor said to my senior class: “You should appreciate what we do here, When you get into the workforce…”
Sadly, I don’t remember what any of them “did…”
…except make lasting, lifelong impressions on me.
Oh, and I do get to capitalize on it by writing about it, years later.
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