Trouble in school wasn’t always in the classroom and wasn’t necessarily from misbehavior. My freshman football season started going badly before we had a game with another school. I didn’t understand underlying motives for reactions of adults in my community until reflection when I was an adult.

The afore mentioned eraser thrower¹part-5 asked me during the summer after eighth grade if I was going out for football. Except for him, I beat everyone else in gym class wind sprints at least once, but I had not thought about school sports. He convinced me it might be fun even though I’d never handled a football or watched a game.

I learned to cradle the ball and run sideways. But there were enough running backs, so I was assigned to play center on offense and linebacker on defense. Neither was a suitable assignment for my size – 5’2, 110 lbs.
We played single wing, so the quarterback didn’t get the ball any more than the right or left halfback or the fullback.

The pre-season freshman/senior scrimmage was a tradition.

Not too long into the game, the freshman defensive line opened like frightened ducks leaving a pond. I was in my center linebacker position a few yards back from the right and left linebackers. The only thing between me and the 210 lb. varsity fullback was groomed football turf.

I held my ground and took a step forward as he closed the distance between us. I expected him to dodge or for me to give him a lucky shoulder hit with my ill-fitting body pads and leather helmet. He veered only a little and got a low center shot from my helmet. He threw up on the turf and was out for the first game of the season.

I knew some teachers, who like many men of that time, cursed now and then. At the injury timeout, the varsity coach Mr. Hdcoach let loose with a barrage of profanity directed at me such that I don’t remember hearing in anger since. I didn’t understand. I learned later the fullback was key to a winning season and coach was hungry. I was uninjured but didn’t play the rest of the game.

The fullback told me when he returned that he wasn’t angry with me because I was doing what any opponent linebacker might do. Then he confided that Hdcoach had instructed him to bowl me over instead of dodging a tackle I might try.

I also realized later, if Mr. Hdcoach was at a freshman game, I was on the bench.

This being the eighth in my series about troubles I had in school, and with several more to come, I don’t want you to get the impression that school was an all-bad experience for me. There were many good times during those years. But I formed only one lasting acquaintanceship. There probably would have been many more, but I left town and never went back except to visit family.

Mrs. H.S. Prin was my junior high school Social Studies teacher and one of my morning paper route customers.

The Minneapolis Star evening paper from the day before, and the Minneapolis Tribune, “Trib”, morning paper were delivered to some customers every morning. I delivered both papers to Mrs. and Mr. H.S. Prin weekday mornings and the “Trib” on Sundays. ¹The newspapers merged in 1987 and became the Minnesota Star Tribune in 2024.

I didn’t feel well but was up before six so I wouldn’t have to pay a sub two or three times what I made and delivered all the papers before my mother let me go back to bed. I missed my morning classes, including Social Studies taught by Mrs. H.S. Prin.

I became fully recovered and went to my afternoon classes and a basketball game in the evening. It was the same scenario the next day. But I got – you know what I’m talking about – when I went to Social Studies class on Friday morning.

Mrs. H.S. Prin saw me at the basketball game and gave a truancy note to Mr. J.H. Principal. I had a week of after school detention and was not allowed to attend the next two home basketball games.

That wasn’t too bad, because I didn’t really like basketball anyway, and I could do homework or read during detention. Any guess what I chose to do?

PS: Mrs. and Mr. H.S. Prin still gave me a twenty-five-cent tip when I collected weekly for the newspaper when a dime or less tip was more common.

Would it be redundant to say during my many years in the classroom, I got in trouble more than once? I slipped through the first semester of elementary school seventh grade in Holmes City, MN, without any trouble I can remember and entered second semester of junior high seventh grade in Alexandria, MN.

I remember other things about that second half of seventh grade, but nothing about trouble in school.

I was nearly fourteen when I entered eighth grade where the strong majority of my ‘peers’ were thirteen.

My first eighth grade English teacher was at least 90 or even 100 years old in our minds – probably late 40s or early 50s in real life. I already had a seventh-grade record of being not just a poor speller, but an ‘extremely poor’ speller. My nearly illegible handwriting was one of the problems, but not a real excuse. My natural left-handedness was long gone, and I can rationalize now that I may have done better if printing had been allowed.

Thursday was the traditional spelling test day. And we got the list of twenty-five words for the next week on Friday. Words were written in cursive on a side of the room blackboard and were to be copied during silent reading time. I often wondered why she wouldn’t give us a ditto machine copy to study.

One week I made a firm decision to elevate my grade and copied the words very carefully. I’d not worked with others to study spelling words before, but I did for that set of 25. As was my common plight, I had trouble repeating spellings orally, ¹That is still a problem for me today. but for that list I could write them clearly enough to be read by the peers with whom I studied.

Mrs. X spoke the words, we wrote, we exchanged papers, she spelled the words, we marked the errors, and computed scores. Papers didn’t go back to us, so we were in suspense until the next day when she gave our papers back.

The classmate who checked mine gave me a thumbs up after the test, so I knew I’d done well. The next day when the teacher said, “Benson, see me after class,” I expected a congratulations for my effort. She was the only non-PE teacher who used my last name. I never heard her call others by their last name, and she never called me Morris.

Instead of congratulating me, she said something like, “I don’t know how you got all of the words right. I always watch for cheaters. You’ll do a retake after school.”

It didn’t sound like an option!

She stood only a few feet away from me and gave the words in a different order. My score was 25/25 again. She told me she’d not accept my doing so well and told me she believed I’d found a way to cheat right in front of her. She gave me a 76% – the minimum passing grade.

I know now I shouldn’t have, but I gave up studying for spelling tests and maintained my still low but not failing class average with other activities. I didn’t realize at the time, but my not getting good spelling test scores again confirmed her hard held suspicions that I really had cheated.

Later in the year I got a lifelong positive punishment from her.

PS: I am still a poor spiller.

As I said before during my many years in the classroom, I got in trouble more than once. Elem – jr hi – hs – ba – ms, etc, and teaching. Well, I finally started fourth grade when I was nine in Van Hook, North Dakota. So, I must have not been in school when we were in Kansas. But I was not only older than my most of my classroom peers, but I had missed much more school time getting to that level.

My school trouble in Van Hook was long lasting but not debilitating.

I was born left-handed and am still left eye dominant. In my generation, in rural North Dakota, being left-handed was not socially acceptable. (There’s more to that, but it’s not the point of this post.)

My memory does not include how I got along in my first three partial years of school, but when I entered fourth grade, I couldn’t write cursive like most who had completed the Palmer Penmanship training in third grade. I’m making a big assumption here – I must have been printing left-handed at the time.

My teacher, Miss. Y, smacked my hand with a ruler every time she saw me using my left hand. ¹I actually do remember her family name, but to protect the guilty or innocent as the case may be … And she didn’t use the flat of the ruler – she used the edge and at least once the edge with the brass insert!

I didn’t tell my mother, not that she could have done anything about it. Even female teachers were somewhere on the top three or four rungs of social authority over kids and had absolute authority at school.

So ends my memories of elementary school troubles.

I became right-handed, but my handwriting became nearly illegible which impacted me for several years leading to, “Can’t read this, Benson, do it over,” by more than one junior high teacher and at least one high school teacher.

As I said before, during my many years in the classroom I got in trouble more than once. Elem – jr hi – hs – ba – ms, etc, and while teaching. I was supposed to start in third grade in Alexandria, MN, but started late in Houston, TX. But I don’t remember being in ‘swat in the hinie’ trouble there.

I was eight, and not sure where or when I finished second grade. All I remember is that I went to second grade for a while in Pasco, WA.
That’s another story, but not about school.

I learned to call ladies ma’am and men sir at school in Houston. My trailer park friend tried to warn me, but I didn’t learn the lesson until the teacher confronted me.

The teacher asked me a yes or no question and I said, “Yeah or yup.”

She told me my response was slang and not to be used in school. She asked if I understood and I answered, “Yes.”

I was quickly and firmly informed that the correct response to such questions was, “Yes ma’am,” or “No ma’am.” Not doing so was considered inappropriate and even insulting to an adult. The tone of her message was effective! And I also learned that y’all could be used in place of you, you all, or even all of you.

The whole class practiced for a Christmas musical. Perhaps because I was the new kid or had no apparent musical ability, my part was small and would have no impact on the program if I wasn’t there. My role was to toot a small tin horn at the appropriate place in “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

“Little tin horns, little toy drums.
Rudy-toot-toot [I toot the horn.] and rummy tum tums.
Santa Claus is coming to town.”

It could have been that I didn’t listen well or just couldn’t hear well. I missed the cue most of the time. The teacher rebuked me in front of the class every time I missed. I don’t remember being in the pageant.

I know we moved to Kansas some time that school year, but I don’t remember school there. My next trouble was in Van Hook, North Dakota.