For my next season of life, I will follow Shakespeare’s order, but not his view. He has a whining schoolboy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school. My schooldays began at Hardy Station, Mississippi with Daddy as the principal of the six-grade rural school as well as pastor of the Baptist Church. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Winter, was mother of William Winter who would one day become governor and be credited by many, including me, as being the best governor the state ever had. (It wasn’t hard to figure out where he got his penchant to put an emphasis on education.) To say I was excited to start to school would be a vast understatement.
I loved the school part. Recess, not so much. Not only was I last chosen when divvying up the sides, on one momentous occasion, the captain who was stuck with me since I was last, tried to bargain his way out of it. He said to the other captain, “I’ll give you five points if you’ll take her.” Thankfully, recess took up very short times, and we were back in class again.
Math was fine, but pretty boring. 6 + 7 = 13 on Monday or Thursday or any other day. Once you know it, there’s not much you can do with it. Words were another matter. Other people had arranged them into stories, poems, historical accounts – all kinds of reading material. Then there was the opportunity to arrange them myself. Apparently, there is no limit to the way they can be arrayed to make all sorts of interesting reading.
Then there was the bane of my existence – hair. I had an abundance of fine straight hair the color of pond silt that refused to take a home permanent for the requisite curls that were in fashion without burning the ends to a crisp. Mama inflicted me with her stress over the hair business until she came to a solution. Pigtails! First grade found two meeting at the top of my head with the rest of my hair hanging loose behind. By the time I was ten, I could braid them myself unless it was a special occasion calling for her to do French braids or some other special effect. Small drawbacks of boys who yanked them and yelled, “Whoa, Muley!” were a small price to pay for the relief from trying to find curls. She did insist on bangs to go with them which I normally pushed straight up because I was hot and sweaty.
The pigtails were cut when I was in eighth grade by my foster sister who knew about hair, and she gave me an improved permanent that created reasonable facsimile curls. The pond silt color remained since Mama was of the firm opinion that God gave you the color of hair that you needed.