Sex and Violence

On my first day of school Ronald walked up and asked me to participate in a kids' "joke." I don't know if kids do that old joke anymore, but it goes like this. One kid says, "Look up, look down, look all around." The other kid follows along with this. Then the first kid says something like, "Your pants are falling down." What a riot.

I had played the game before so I was not interested. Ronald begged and pleaded, promising not to say "Your pants are falling down," or ANYTHING bad. So, since I was five, I believed him.

At Ronald's prompting, I looked up, looked down, looked all around. I am not sure what Ronald said next; his Sylvester-the-cat speech impediment was too heavy for me to understand how he finished the joke. But he laughed loudly at me, so I was sure he did not say anything complimentary.

So I punched him in the throat. His voice got instantly hoarser than before as he bellowed for Mrs. Welch, our first grade teacher (she was an angel). She did not do anything to correct me--except maybe she told me, "Don't do that." Maybe she went light because it was the first day any of us had gone to school.

I remember one other thing from that day. At recess after lunch, I went over to where the second grade girls were playing in the sandbox and kissed quite a few of them. They did not seem to mind.

At nap time, I lay on my deep purple naugahyde mat that my grandma made for me. Mrs. Welch walked up to me and said, "John, did you kiss the second grade girls in the sandbox?"

I said, "Yes ma'am."

She said, "Well you should not do that anymore."

I said, "Yes ma'am."

Back then, that was the most sex and violence that anyone in the school system had heard of.