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Random thoughts 

 I have referred to More on George B. McClellan Elementary School. We now arrive at the more. I started Sheldon Elementary on a Monday enrolled in the fourth grade. The teacher was a woman named Mrs. Hillmer. I can’t recall her first name. Thursday she tells me she wants to drive me home after school to talk to my parents. WOW! Does that ever sound ominous. In any event after school we got in her car and she drove me home. We all sat down around the kitchen table and she proceeds to tell my parents that she thinks I have a vision problem. The back wall behind her desk was a huge blackboard and she noticed I couldn’t see what was on the blackboard. Investigating farther she concluded I couldn’t read at all. Not only that she concluded I couldn’t do basic math. She suggested I be taken to town to see Doc Frederick and have my eyes tested. Beyond that she was at a loss as to what to do next as it wouldn’t do any good to set me back a year as I still couldn’t read or write. The next day we went to call on Doc Frederick. Doc Frederick was the last of what they call GP’s or General Practitioners. He specialized in nothing but treated everything including doing eye exams. Doc put the thing in front of my face and we started the process. Is this better or is this better and so on. I’m sure you all know the drill. After he was finished he informed my parents that I had acute Myopia, which is near sighted, so bad that I was borderline legally blind. The glasses were ordered and we were told they would take about a week. Mrs Hillmer gave Ma some flash cards with the alphabet on them and some basic Dick and Jane books to find out what I actually knew. I pretty much knew the alphabet but couldn’t read the Dick and Jane books. My math was very basic as I could do 2 and 2 makes 4 but couldn’t do division or fractions. Now we get to the mystery that I have pondered for the better part of 75 years. Was the Chicago school system so bad that they could turn out a third grader that was blind and couldn’t read or write or do math? Did I even attend school at all? I have vivid memories of Kindergarten but no memories of my class room teachers or grades 1 through 3. As far as school is concerned all I can remember are the snow ball fights and the janitor supposedly dispensing paddling punishment. The little girl with the black hair and pig tails would certainly have come after Kindergarten. The only things I remember from Kindergarten was rolling out the little rolled up mats at nap time, playing musical chairs and brick shaped wooden building blocks. If I were to guess I would say the problem was my last name started with L which means I would have been seated near the back of the room. In those days seating was done alphabetically which means A’s sat up front and Z’s in the back. Being basically blind and sitting in the back I wouldn’t have been able to see much. I have no recollection of report cards or test taking or any interaction with teachers. There is a 3 year blank in my memory bank concerning school. I probably didn’t play hooky for 3 years because in those day they had Truant Officers whose job it was to track down kids not attending school. Logic says I attended school and managed to be passed on from grade to grade without learning anything. Later on I managed the same feat with High School. In any event I was where I was and Mrs. Hillmer and my parents decided on a crash course of teaching both at home and at the school. The only memory I have of grade school in Chicago was the teachers used to walk up and down the aisles carrying a pointer and occasionally whacking someone on the knuckles for something or other. It never happened to me but I saw it happen quite a few times. The mystery of test taking and report cards never did get solved. The next Random Thoughts I will cover my crash course in learning.