At the turn of the century the Catholic school system must have gotten a bargain price on 18 million gallons of wax, which they are still trying to use up! The smell of floor wax, the faint mustiness of old books, and the scent of oranges and sour milk are odors that conjure up old fears in me. When my oldest son started school, the pain I'd suffered over not being able to learn to read all came rushing back. I still can't handle those odors.

I couldn't handle my son's homework either. When he started school there was no way I could sit down and help with his homework. The sight of paper made me anxious. I wanted to beat him up because he wouldn't do his work. I acted towards him just like my father had acted towards me. I was a wreck.

Except for my first year, school was always very hard for me. We lived next door to the school so I used to tag along with my older brother when I was four. Everyone liked me then; I was a 4-year-old princess. But when I was in the first grade and was supposed to learn to read all that changed.

I couldn't make sense out of the letters and I didn't understand why that annoyed the teachers so much. They'd try showing me pictures and that didn't help either.

It wasn't only that the little legs on the b 's and d 's kept switching sides, the same happened with the q's, p's and g's. The lines on the F's and E's would disappear right while I was looking at them, and was always confused by w 's, m's and n's. I couldn't hold on to the image long enough to remember what I'd seen. Some kids can look at a pictures of an "A" illustrated with a big happy animal clue and know instantly that alligator is a clue for the letter "A". Seeing the Alligator picture next to the letter "A " didn't do a thing for me. I thought it was the picture of a crocodile!

I couldn't remember the "B", so showing me a picture of a rabbit didn't help at all. I didn't know if the "B" stood for bunny or rabbit, or if "C" meant cat or kitten. The cues only mixed me up more. And I could tell by the tone of the teachers' voices that they didn't like me any more.

It was all such confusion to me. I had been so loved, and everything I did when I was younger was just wonderful. I could memorize songs and prayers better than anyone else could. How then, just one short year later, could they fill my papers up with nothing but glaring red marks? I was in shock.

I kept trying to do my best, but after that first year osmosis failed, and I didn't learn any more.

It didn't help that third grade was held in a basement packed with well over 50 (or more) children. There was barely space between the last seat and the radiators against the wall, which was where my desk was. I desperately tried to sit still and be quiet but the water gurgling through the radiators added to the sounds I had to filter out.

That's where I learned to love rainy days. The lights weren't turned on in the basement classroom unless it was a dark rainy day. When the lights were on I could see the letters better.

I was the dumbest girl in class. Never mind that there were a couple of boys who were dumber. The smartest girl in class was Mary Anne. She knew all the answers. She had a jettison right arm that went straight up every time a question was asked and, worse than that she knew all the right answers. Pure animosity was the way I felt about her.

All of school was a wipe-out for me. I couldn't spell, couldn't read, couldn't do math and couldn't copy from the blackboard. I never could do what the teachers expected of me.

And once when the nuns told my mother to keep me home from school because it would make the kids sick to see my bandaged eye, (from "harpooning whales" in our back yard) I was sure the reason they didn't want me around was because I couldn't learn to read.

The only time I can remember that school was fun was once when we were allowed to tie rags on our feet and race around rubbing the floor to bring out the shine!

I wasn't even good at "Line up" and it was a big thing in Catholic schools. The nun in charge had a frog clicker that she used instead of snapping her fingers. The clicker told you when to kneel, when to say your "Our Father," when to look down, when to line up, and never to talk.

"Line up " at the end of the school day at 3 o'clock once resulted in a burned leg for Mary Anne because the radiator was so hot. There was not a bit of empathy or sorrow for Mary Anne in my heart. This is what I thought was a good day at school.

My parents were so diligent with me; they did everything they could to help me. They even papered the bedroom walls with the alphabet!

My mother would sit with my brother; and my dad, in his quest to be a good father and to make us better than he was, would sit with me night after night, trying to get me to learn my spelling words. A word such as "the" was so abstract that I could never memorize it. "How could you be so stupid?" he would ask, in his frustration, "You just saw it in the last sentence." He'd get so angry with me that he'd slap me on the side of my head and then he'd get up and walk away. According to what was believed in those days the discipline was acceptable. I prayed constantly as to where my faults were. I did so want my father to love me and appreciate me.

Because I could never do what the teachers expected of me I felt harassed in school; I wasn't learning like I was supposed to. I would sit practicing each of my spelling words 25 times-undoubtedly writing them a different way each time! I was soon so anxious I would wet my pants when called upon to read out loud.

I got the distinct feeling that nobody wanted me around. My social problems got as bad as my academic ones, and I started to overeat. I'd always been goodsized but after that I started to put on weight.

I think I was about seven when I began cataloguing feelings. I knew that I would never want to make anyone feel terrible by doing certain things that always made me feel awful when they happened to me. When something made me feel wonderful, that was what I wanted to do for others. And I still have that desire.

From Mary Grigar, A Day to Cry, pp.1-5