I’ve been writing up scenes from my life and it occurred to me that for the sake of well, completeness, I ought to include at least a couple episodes that don’t reflect well on me. So here’s one.

In the first few years that I attended grade school at Richland, our class was split in two because Richland didn’t have enough grade school teachers. As it happened, I was in the smaller of the two parts, which were divided mostly by alphabetical order. I say mostly because we were in the latter part of the alphabet, but because the split had occurred to keep Pam Barry from being taught by her mother, she was lumped with us.

When we got to fifth grade in 1959 our teacher was Miss Irene Klopp, who taught both our small subset of fifth grade and the entire sixth grade class. Lucky me, I was to have her for two full years!

Anyway, as best as I can recall our class consisted of Pam and me along with Richie Spitler, Skeet Seldomridge, Johnny Steinbach, Bobby Weinhold, and (I think) Darryl Royer. Plus, there was a new girl in town named Carrie White (not her real name). I believe she was only with us for part of the school year, but I’m not sure if it was the first part or the last part.

Now the sad thing is that Carrie was not well treated by the other kids, at least not by the boys, I’m not sure about the girls. She didn’t dress well, she got poor grades, and she was just ripe for ill treatment. I had also heard that she had a difficult home life; I think it was her father who allegedly was extremely strict with her.

Was I one of her tormenters? I’d like to say that I wasn’t, but I just don’t remember. I think I simply didn’t bother with her, which is bad enough. If I actively participated in calling her names, well, I don’t recall doing so, but nor did I try to stop others from doing it.

One incident that I remember because it’s so bizarre.

Miss Irene Klopp was trying to conduct a class of some sort and was calling on us to answer questions. As per usual, Carrie wasn’t raising her hand, but what was odd was that she was leaning forward with her arms wrapped in front of her on her desk as if she were protecting something.

Finally Miss Irene Klopp asked her what she was doing (Carrie was sitting in the front desk of the row) and discovered that there on her desk Carrie had vomited in a neat pile and was trying to hide it. 

Miss Irene Klopp immediately sent her to the rest room and proceeded to clean up the vomit and then sprayed nearly an entire bottle of disinfectant spray all over the desk and seat.

Anyway my uncle Curtis, or Mr. Troutman as everyone called him, was the music teacher for the school, and at some point during the year he offered any kid who was interested a flutophone. I think it cost a dollar or even less. The idea being that we’d then learn the basics of playing it and perhaps give a little concert for the class. 

Somehow I got involved in collecting the money from everyone who was interested, and I knew that Carrie was one of the kids who wanted a flutophone. As the deadline approached for getting in the money, I happened to see her walk into Skippy’s luncheonette, so I followed her inside and reminded her that there were only so many days left. And I realized that talking to her hadn’t hurt me at all and she seemed to be a pretty nice decent kid. So I decided I’d try to make an effort to be pleasant to her from then on.

I went to Sunday school as usual that weekend. Our teacher at that time was Joyce Chadwick. She had been in Skippy’s and had seen me interact with Carrie and for some reason she felt she needed to say something, right there in front of God and every guy in our Sunday school class.

“Was that your girlfriend I saw you talking to the other day in Skippy’s?” 

My face must have turned fifty shades of red as I tried to explain.

But that ended any effort on my part to try to be nice to Carrie.