When it Takes a Little Luck

A Story from the Second Grade

Luck hasn’t always been my lady, but once when I was in the second grade, she did agree to go out with me. It was late January 1954 and, believe me, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I was flunking arithmetic and had just gotten paddled for punching Pudge Pogue in the stomach. Pudge had demanded my chair in reading circle and attempted to sit on me when I refused. You have to understand that Pudge was the class bully and, as much as she out-weighed me a good twenty pounds, I pleaded self-defense. But Mrs. Walker overruled. She came from the old school where boys didn’t hit girls under any circumstances, even hulking menaces like Pudge Pogue. Pudge had six older brothers, so even if you did take her on, you had to answer to the Pogue boys. But that rarely happened as Pudge terrified all second graders and most of the third.

The Pudge Incident aside, my troubles all started when my oldest sister Patricia planned on having her first child in a place called San Antonio, and my mother, a rookie grandmother, decided to attend the birthing. That would’ve been fine, except she left my sister Michele and me with Daddy. That would’ve been fine, too, except Daddy had butchered a hog in the fall, and decided to put us on an all-pork diet until Mom got back. As babies often do, my niece didn’t agree with the doctor’s date of delivery and delayed her grand entry for a couple weeks. One week during that time I got the flu, so Aunt Velma, Daddy’s sister, came up from Tulsa to stay with us, and tried to feed me milk toast. Uncle Erwin, she said, loved milk toast when he had an upset stomach. When I told Daddy about it that evening, he said that Uncle Erwin was a pansy, if you wanted his opinion.

So, between Daddy’s salted pig, Aunt Velma’s wimp food, and my scholastic difficulties, Michele and I were on the verge of setting off in search of Mom. Finding San Antonio, we reasoned, could be no worse than more days of salty ham and soft poached eggs.

The next Monday at school Mrs. Walker would pass out report cards. The principal’s call to conference with Daddy regarding the Pudge Pogue Affair hadn’t set well with him, and now, if I brought home a “U” (Unsatisfactory) in arithmetic, well… That’s when Lady Luck accepted my collect call.

“Philip, I want to speak to you after class,” Mrs. Walker said. She wore her hair in a bun twisted on top of her head which she used as a pencil holder. At least two sharp ones usually protruded from it like insect antennae. Her thick glasses magnified her small eyes, and she pursed her lips making her look like a dried apricot with headlights. She wasn’t a bad woman though, merely intense about the business of instructing seven-year-olds.

Earlier she said, “Philip, go to the board and complete problem three.” Mrs. Walker believed in the Board Problem Method of teaching public humiliation and used it extensively.

Gulping back dread as thick as cold molasses, I walked to the front of the room with chains around my legs. Sniggers bombarded me from every direction. By January of that year, my reputation at the board had become legend. As I passed George Botts, he bit his tongue and slapped the top of his desk to suppress his mirth. At the board I stared at the chalk horror in front of me.

“Read us the problem, please,” Mrs. Walker said from the pulpit of her desk.

“Nine hundred thousand, fifty…”

More titters.

“Nine thousand, nine hundred fifty,” she corrected.

“Nine thousand, nine hundred fifty and two…”

“Holy cow,” George Botts snorted. The class howled.

“Class,” Mrs. Walker warned, and snapped her fingers twice. Silence returned but facing the board I could still hear the grins. My face burned as if bared to an August sun.

“…take away fifty hund…

“Fie-ev hundred,” she said.

“…five hundred f-f-for… I mean, fifty-seven.”

“Very good. Now figure the answer.”

In the second grade, answers I got to arithmetic problems came to me only by divine messenger, and not by reason. I hastily wrote an eight, a four, and two fives beneath the problem’s horizontal chalk line. Wrong, of course. Mercifully, Mrs. Walker let me return to my seat, judiciously ignoring the left jab I sent to a gasping George Botts’ shoulder as he tried not to fall out of his seat from his hysteria.

“Philip,” Mrs. Walker said once we were alone that afternoon. “I wanted to talk to you about your arithmetic grade.” I started mentally working out my plans for the road trip to San Antonio.

“I know your mother has been gone for several weeks, and with your father taking care of you, you’re probably not eating right, and…”

A ray of sunshine cut through my gloom. “Yes ma’am,” I blurted. “It’s the ham. And Aunt Velma’s been trying to make us eat pansy food, and — “

“What?” She looked confused at my outburst, and somewhat perturbed that I interrupted her. Her brow furrowed. Her lips pursed. Her eyes flashed to high beam. I buttoned my lip.

“Well, anyway, I know your mother would be upset if you brought home this ‘U’ in arithmetic, so I’m going to change it to an ‘I’ (Incomplete) if you promise me you will study very hard this last nine weeks.”

“Oh, yes ma’am,” I said.

So, Lady Luck paid me a visit in the second grade. I was darn lucky my mom had taken off for southern Texas, so that my teacher felt sorry for me, thinking me semi-orphaned, and flunking arithmetic because of excessive milksop food and a pork overdose.

As it turned out, I was flunking arithmetic because I couldn’t see the blackboard and needed glasses. The nature of my problem finally dawned on Mrs. Walker during one of her stints as playground warden. She watched as George Botts threw me a football which I missed with my hands but stopped with my forehead… three times.

A special thanks to Tim Maudlin for suggesting I write a personal story. This is a re-worked, re-purpose of a piece I did several years ago. Sold it, but it never got published. It’s all autobiographical, except some of the names have been changed (Pudge Pogue) mainly to protect me.

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