The "Special" Class

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I went to 1st, 2nd, and a part of 3rd grade in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.  I was given an "office" in my classroom near the teacher.  It was a portable chalkboard shoved near the corner of the room with enough space between it and the wall for a desk. That was my office.  I don't remember feeling ashamed or singled out.  I just knew that I had to sit in the corner all day away from everyone else and not bother them.  I remember feeling, "Yeah, that's right. I better sit over there or I'm going to bother others." which I tended to do, often.

We rented the 1st floor of an old house near the town square.  Above us was rented out to an elderly couple, the Buntings.  "Mr. Bunt" (as Todd used to call him), was a principal of one of the other elementary schools in town.  He was at a Principal's meeting in the district and the administrators started telling war stories.  My name came up. Mr. Bunt was kind enough to tell my parents....

I remember staying after school so much that my teacher looked at me one afternoon and asked, "Chris, why are you still here?" I replied, "Aren't I in trouble?" and she said, "No. GO HOME!"

On the third floor of the school building was a room of mystery, terror, and wonder. It was the "Special" classroom.  No one knew what went on in there, but it always seemed to involve cooking, or food.  Sometimes you would walk by there and the door would be ajar, and you could see kids laying on the floor, or standing near the window rocking back and forth.  There was always music wafting down the hall, and sometimes yelling.

Some of the kids from that room would have recess the same time we would.  There was a boy there with a 50's style haircut, black plastic horn-rimmed glasses, and beard-stubble.  A 5th grader with a beard...awesome. I tormented that kid any chance I got. I would run near him and make comments. I talked about his haircut, his glasses, his stubble.  One recess he was standing away from the other "Specials" when I made a b-line for him.  Before I could  get a word out, he had me on the ground like Captain Kirk flinging the Gorgon onto the Styrofoam rocks.  He never punched be, he just held me there.

The teacher on duty hauled us both up to the assistant Principal's office on the 3rd floor and left us.  His office was two converted janitor's closets,  We say in his "waiting room" with no one around.  The room was wide enough for two chairs to sit side by side.  So there we were, hot, covered in dirt, with our knees touching.  I question the wisdom of setting two young boys who were, moments earlier, fighting on the playground, in the same cramped room with no adult supervision, but that's what she did.

I started lying about how many fights I'd been in and how many people I'd beaten-up and how I was in a street gang like in West Side Story blah, blah, blah.  And the other boy said he had never been in a fight before...and we began to talk.  Everything I liked, he liked.  I went to speech therapy and he went to speech therapy with the same therapist.  He was exactly like me.

We moved shortly after that incident.  My dad's business had failed, so we moved back to Indianola so he could work for an up-start retail chain from Minnesota that had a radical new logo, "Target."  But it was that incident that really put me on my career path.  I wanted to work in the "Special Class" from then on.  So I did my Cadet Teaching my senior year in Mrs. Truman's Jr. High Resource class.  I got a Bachelors in Special Ed and I've worked with some type of "Special Population"...ever since.

chris