Left to right: My 3rd grade photo; Columbus Day art and (on the back) my rendering of a Viking ship, inspired by The Vikings, my favorite movie that year; doodles and bad spelling.

My Real Memoir: The Year I Became “The Clever Kid”

It was the start of a new school year. But not just any school year. It was the year I moved to the Big Kid’s Side of the campus! Our school had an invisible barrier, a Ye-Shall-Not-Pass line separating K-through-2nd (the Little Kids Side) and 3rd-through-6th (the Big Kids Side). When we were 2^nd-graders, we’d sometimes test the line by putting our foot over to see if we we’d be instantly vaporized, or worse, “pounded” by a Big Kid.

Mostly, we just got menacing looks, but those were enough to keep us in our ghetto–which had all the fun stuff anyway: Monkey Bars, Jungle Gyms, Slides, and Swing Sets that could launch you into orbit if you pumped hard enough!

Swingers Forever

Confession: After starting 3^rd grade, Jeff and Rory and I started sneaking over to the playground after school and devolving back into Little Kids. Because nothing in the world was funner than “bailing out” of a swing when it reached the upper stratosphere! True, I flew in my dreams every night, but daylight flying required a swing set.

Still, Rory and I soon discovered that “flying” Little Kids was every bit as fun. There was nothing better than seeing their puffy pink grins as we swung them around and around in Rory’s front yard. Once word got out, there were a dozen neighborhood gigglers lined up waiting to fly every day when we got home.

But Officially Speaking…

Being a Big Kid meant replacing Play with Games. During recesses, slides and swings had given way to Four Square, Hopscotch, Tetherball, and Kickball. The only one I excelled at was Kickball. I loved booting those big, soft, red kickballs out over everyone’s heads. But the school’s phys-ed agenda had designated Kickball as a temporary training game, and soon replaced it with Softball. Which I suckcelled at. My foot knew what to do; it was a part of me; I loved it and it loved me. But baseball bats were foreign objects. And hitting a tiny, hard ball with a bat required something I didn’t have (neither did Jeff or Rory): a dad who came home and played catch with you until your mom yelled, “Supper!” My dad wasn’t a nine-to-fiver, he was a nine-to-lifer who came home long after it was too dark to play catch. Which was pretty much OK with me. Because I became…

“The Clever Kid” Instead

I was the one whose artwork was perpetually praised by Mrs. Gibbons. Which should have made me a loathsome teacher’s pet. Except for one thing: I’d been telling myself stories since the womb, and once I broke through my shell of shyness, I discovered an audience dying to hear those stories! Plus, I could do Funny Voices.

But the real hook was that Mrs. Gibbons also liked my storytelling. And so, whenever the class behaved well during Quiet Time, she would reward them with me. I was especially good at doing Uncle Remus characters (anathema nowadays). Heck, I was right up there with cookies and milk. So, even though I never learned to hit a baseball, I managed to squeak by on my rep as…

The Clever Kid.