Ocala.com Bloggers
- Broken News
- Bill Thompson
- Digital Editor
- Eric Barnes
- Frame 37
- Ocala.com Multimedia
- Marion Politics
- Newsroom
- Observations
- Naseem S. Miller
- OcalaDay
- Joe Byrnes
- Read My E-Mail
- Allen Parson
- Running Wide Open
- Joe Vanhoose
- Speaking of Business...
- Dr. Philip R. Geist
- The Bowling Blog
- Debbie Whitten
- The Green Zone
- Dave Rhea
- The Sports Blog
- Gregory Broome
- What is that?
- Newsroom
 |
Search Blogs
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Blog Archives
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
An old mystery – finally solved
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Location: Blogs Sly Comments |
 |
| Posted by: Emory Schley |
4/14/2007 5:44 AM |
When I was just a wee little kid, we lived for a time in Orange County, a brief interlude from our time in Miami. We didn’t stay long, just a year, before returning to Dade County, now known as Miami-Dade County.
We were living in Winter Garden, a little town not far from Orlando. I was enrolled in elementary school in the second grade.
We were about halfway through the school year, when one day the principal came into our classroom, then conferred privately with the teacher for a moment or two. The teacher, whose name I no longer remember, then told two other students to come to the front of the room. I believe their names were Margie and Dan. Then she called me to the front of the room. The principal then told the three of us to follow him. As we left the classroom, I remember thinking we must have done something really wrong to have the principal personally come after us. Only problem was, I wasn’t aware of anything I had done that would be cause for either criticism or alarm.
He led us into the hallway, then down a corridor to another class where we followed him in. It was a fifth grade classroom. He told the teacher something like, “Here they are,” then turned around and left without further comment. The teacher motioned us to some empty desks in the back of the classroom and told us we were going to be taking a test.
We sat down as she began passing out test papers, and I wondered why we were taking a test with the big kids, but I said nothing. I just picked up a pencil and began going through the questions when told to do so.
Once the test was completed and turned in, another adult escorted the three of us back to our own classroom, where we once again sat down, and picked up our studies as though nothing had happened. But I did wonder why we had to take those tests. As I continued through my studies that year, no mention was ever made of the incident again, and I pretty much forgot about it.
Years later, while home on leave from the Army, I was talking with my parents about some testing procedures the Army had put us through, and on which I had done rather well. My mother then said it must have been somewhat like those special tests I took back in the second grade. At first, I was unsure what she was talking about, until I remembered the day Dan and Margie and I were thrown in with the fifth graders for a test. I had never mentioned those tests to my parents and I was surprised they knew about them. I asked if they had known about those tests all these years, and they both said yes, they did.
Somewhat flabbergasted at this unexpected revelation, I asked why were we singled out for those tests. Then my mother explained that the school had contacted them to ask permission to give me a test with the fifth graders. And my mother agreed. I asked why they wanted to do that, and she explained the school officials were considering skipping me and the other two kids into the fifth grade. This came as quite a surprise to me because no one had ever explained what was going on back when it was happening. Then I said something like “I guess I didn’t do well enough on the tests. Too bad, it would’ve been pretty neat to skip a couple of grades like that.”
Mother then told me, “Oh, you did just fine on those tests, you outscored most of the fifth graders, they told me. They were all set to move you into the fifth grade, but your father and I decided we didn’t think you would fit in well with the other kids with them being so much older than you.”
“So MUCH older? Only TWO years?” I protested, but it was a moot point by then – and by many years.
After that conversation, I used to frequently wonder how my life might have been different had I been allowed to join the fifth grade back then. I would have saved two years of schooling, and would have graduated at 15.
As a teenager, we had a neighbor girl, Pattie Patterson, who had graduated at 15, having skipped the second and the fourth grades in school. After she graduated, she wasn’t planning to attend college but couldn’t get a job because you had to have a Social Security card, and you couldn’t get one of those until you were 16. It’s different now, but that’s how it was back then. Pattie used to have nothing to do but sit around and watch TV all day while her parents worked.
I guess it all worked out for the best, but I always envied Pattie that full year’s worth of TV-watching. That might have been a lot of fun! |
|
| Permalink |
Trackback |
|
|
|
|