Academic Success and Troubles

I was truly one of those geeky girls in eighth and ninth grade, the kind of look one would associate with The Princess Diaries as the "before" picture, at least that is how I viewed myself. I absolutely loved school and learning, but all too often found it boring and too easy. That was when I discovered I could hide a great piece of fiction behind a text book during class. I had always read the assignment, so re-reading it out loud in class was a bore, and fortunately, I seldom got caught mixing science and dinosaurs with King Arthur in class. My English classes were another story, however, as Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Owens at East Junior High School in Gulfport were amazing teachers! I loved their classes and never sneaked a book when in there! Civics, however, was another subject altogether. The teacher was a total nightmare, scraped from the bottom of Mississippi's ugly barrel. He was truly pond scum. The worst part was, not only was he awful looking and a horrible teacher, he thought he was terrific and quite funny. One day he amused himself by telling us how he went fishing over the weekend, blowing up the lake with dynamite, a fine example of citizenship for him to be boasting about. The class did not agree with his humor, and discipline was non-existent in his room. One day in a fit of anger, he screamed, "Well, let's see if you all have any suggestions on I should run my class better!" He then went around the room, asking each individual kid for suggestions. Like I mentioned, I was a geek, and I did love my English teachers, so when he arrived at me, in all of the greatest sincerity only a nerd could offer, I suggested, " Well, Mr. Nichols, maybe you should ask Mrs. Bradford for some ideas. She never has any trouble in her class." Uh-oh. BOY! You cannot even imagine how fast a striaght-A student could be tossed out of class and end up in the principal's office, awaiting my father for a conference. Once he arrived and I explained exactly what happened to both of them, I was pretty much off the hook. The poor principal in private admitted to my dad that Nichols was a disaster, and that he was the last person left on the list to teach, so he had to take him. I agreed to be quiet in class and not cause any more trouble. Dad said later that they both thought the whole story was quite funny and had a hard time not laughing about it in front of me.

My next bout with trouble came with the terrible old maid of a librarian at East. She was the worst stereotype of a librarian that one could conjure up to vision. You can picture her... tight little cork screw curls all over her head; glasses on the end of a thin, pinched nose; a mouth which never smiled and lips always pinched together in a look of displeasure, like she had recently eaten a rotten lemon. Combine that with 1930's style black dresses and oxford lace-up shoes with rolled down stockings, and you have the picture. No one was allowed to make a sound in her library, not a peep. Unfortunately, we were all forced to spend a whole class period of study hall with her, and mine was the last hour of the day. Now, everyone pretty much knew I got good grades, and so other kids would frequently ask me for help with something, and I was glad to interrupt my reading of Longfellow or Poe poems to help during study hall. We never made much noise, but that librarian got mad at me anyhow. One day she called me up to her desk, looked at me across the desk over her glasses, and snipped, "Young lady, you KNOW there is to be NO talking in study hall. I have told you that, and I am tired of this. And I am tired of you and your false eyelashes, too." At this point, she actually reached over and pulled on my eyelashes, which were all mine. This was not too pleasant, I might add. Instead of apologizing, she added, "So, missy, you will report for after school detention for all of your talking." This meant I would miss the bus, so I called my mom, explaining that I was being held for detention. This absolutely astonished Mom, so she asked me on the phone what happened, and I explained. At the point I got to the eye lashes, she said, "Hang up and stay right there. I will be over immediately." OOOOOOH! Boy , was she mad, and she got even madder on the way over. May I say she did quite a good job of leveling down said librarian, and I did not stay for detention. After that, I was quite determined to get even with the librarian, not with anything too bad, mind you. One day, my chance came while she ripping apart some other poor kid. I put just a teeny amount of ink in her fish bowl, and then I carefully balanced a pencil with a string around it ending in a great paperclip fish hook, right into the fish bowl. It was quite funny, especially as all of the kids saw it before she did, but no one knew who had done it. I did feel a bit sorry for the fish, but he survived quite well.

That was the end of my pranks, I'm happy to report. For the rest of my high school and college days, I pretty much remained the same geeky student as before. At the end of freshman year at the awards ceremony, I received the Outstanding Girl Student award, which I cherished, since it redeemed my time in the principal's office! And the rest of my days in Gulfport remained pretty uneventful! Thank goodness!