"The More I Attend School the Dumber I Get"

One time my paw-in-law asked me why I attended so much school.  It was a legitimate question.  I started school at Beloit Kindergarten in Beloit, Illinois in 1959.  I have the class picture, which has the event documented with an informational board in front of the class.  This board shows the school, the date, and the teacher’s name.  That’s school number one.  School number two was Beloit Elementary.  I do not remember much about that school.  I played sick, ran away, and missed so much, that I did not have a class picture to prove I was there.   I have haunting memories of this old, I mean old and mean, teacher who made fun of my Southern accent.  She made fun because I could not skip with both feet.  I showed her I could skip.  I skipped plenty of her classes.

I could walk to this school, but dad would take me occasionally.  I remember one particular morning that I beat him, and my uncle Clifton, back home.  I hid in a chair underneath the dining room table.  When they discovered me, they took me back to school.  I know this sounds like an old cliché, but I did walk to school in the snow and it was on a hill.

Along about March of that school year, 1959-60, we moved back to Alabama and to school number three, Jemison Elementary.  Actually, the elementary, middle school, and high school were all together.  I would spend 11 years and three months at Jemison.

Guess what?  My first grade teacher, Mrs. Shirley, at Jemison was the splitting image of the one in Beloit.  Mrs. Shirley made fun of my Yankee accent.  You have heard of the man with no country.  I was the boy with no dialect.  I had a Southern drawl with a Yankee brogue.

I do not have any pictures from the first grade at Jemison.  I want to think the school had already taken them and I got there too late.  I must confess that I took up my old patterns of running away from school, except this school was seven miles from home.

I devised a plan using the school bus.  Mr. Allen Posey drove school bus Number 34 He lived across from Land Mark.  Most of you might recall that store from earlier article.  Mr. Allen started there and made a big loop back to a local store.  I would convince Mr. Allen that I was deathly ill and get his permission to exit the bus and walk back home.  We had only one vehicle, which daddy used to drive to work.  Once home, I was so sick that mom would nurse me and I would have a miraculous healing.

Mom was a miracle worker when it came to healing and a genius at figuring the schemes of little boys.  She told me that I was not sick.  Really, I was.  I was sick of school and mean teachers that made fun of your speech and made you sit on a stool with a pointed fairly hat, a dunce hat, when you could not answer a question the class discussed while I was taking care of business in the outside toilet of Jemison Elementary.

One morning I was really sick, but mom made me go to school anyway.  My throat hurt something awful.  I remember that afternoon after school getting off the bus and walking home.  I usually could beat the bus home by getting off at the store.  I was burning with fever when I got home.  I had the mumps!

I finally got a good teacher in the second grade, Mrs. Nettie Glasscock, had the best one in the third, Mrs. Avis Harthen, and had a great one, Mrs. Gentry, in the fourth grade.  I started making straight E’s (Excellent) in Mrs. Harthen’s class and straight A’s in Mrs. Gentry’s class.

I tell students that if you hate school, they will make straight A’s.  Those that make bad grades love school.  They love repeating classes and staying in school longer.  I graduated Jemison in May 1971.

Several years later while teaching Sunday School I attended the Howard Extension (now Samford Extension), school number four.  When the Lord called me into full time ministry, I returned to school at the University of Montevallo for four years, school number five.  I attended Bessemer Tech for two years while working in maintenance at the cement plant, school number six.  I attended New Orleans Theological Seminary for four years, school number seven.  I graduated from Beeson School of Divinity Samford University in December 2002.

After all those years of gathering wisdom and a few moments of reflecting, I said, “Paw-in-law, the more I go to school the dumber I get.”  All my years of study has taught me that I really do not know anything.  Boy, you miss a lot when you miss most of the first grade.  The same is true when missing reading the Bible, Sunday School, or preaching.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (Second Timothy 2:15 KJV).

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh (Ecclesiastes 12:12 KJV).