13 OCT 08: KNOW YOUR BLOGGER - THE EARLIEST YEARS

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: This blog is on vacation for several days. In the meantime, we offer this "Know Your Blogger" series -- excerpts from our autobiography, in the shadow of our 50th birthday in August.)

Well, Doctor, it all began at 10:48 p.m. on 4 Aug 58. At least that's what the birth certificate says. I wasn't doing real-time blogging from the womb, the way some young people seem able to do now....

I don't remember the moment of my birth. But I vaguely remember being carried out of the old Providence Hospital on 18th Street in Kansas City, Kansas. My older brother says there's no way I could remember that. At least I don't remember if I was crying or not.

The family gave me a crib spot in the bedroom -- and one afternoon there when I was around two, I started thinking about Jack Paar [28 Jan 04]. Something about the talk show host must have stuck. A couple of years later, I pretended to do talk show interviews at my Father's Odd Fellows Lodge meeting hall.

I've been told I showed an interest in reading, even before entering Kindergarten -- especially in reading aloud the weekly listings in TV Guide. In 2008, of course, this would be dangerous. Titles like "Dirty Sexy Money" probably should bring immediate parental intervention.

Perhaps because of this interest, I was a very early TV viewer. A primitive black-and-white set in the playroom allowed me to watch my version of "prime-time" programs on NBC around 4:00 p.m. -- Shari Lewis with Lamb Chop, then Kukla and Ollie. No, I did NOT have a crush on Miss Fran.

The local stations in Kansas City offered their own children's shows in the early 1960's. A puppet named Charlie Horse presided over "High Noon Cartoons" on one station, while "Cousin Ken" with his carnival didn't thrill me on another. A third presented Whizzo the Clown -- whose loud outfit practically demanded children lobby their parents for color sets.

Yet while I wanted to read TV Guide, my eyesight wasn't very good. I simply couldn't stand flash photography, and started wearing glasses before I was five. In fact, I was the only person in my Kindergarten class who did -- so years before I thought of dating, I already felt like a loser.

I reinforced that image several times during afternoon-only Kindergarten at Hazel Grove School. When "The Farmer in the Dell" record was played, I wound up being the "cheese stands alone" more than once. And no one had thought of "Cheese-Heads" to give away as prizes, to make me feel better.

To be blunt, there was one other issue which kept me feeling ashamed throughout my grade school years. To avoid being TOO blunt by using 2008-speak, I had a bladder control problem. That meant wet beds, wet pants in public -- and the creation of Depends still at least 30 years away.

Yet there were moments of accomplishment during Kindergarten. My teacher Mrs. Scherer marveled at how well I could tell time. We're talking a round clocks with 12numbers here -- as someone actually had to invent the dumbed-down digital kind.

But I wasn't an absolute genius in Kindergarten. For some reason, the grade school moved the classes around one weekend during the year -- and on Monday, I walked into the old room like nothing ever happened and took about the only open desk in a class of third graders. It felt brilliant for about 30 seconds....

Yet I survived Kindergarten with its mid-session naps and lessons about the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Looking at the yearbook now, I was in a class with two very bright girls. One is now an assistant professor of microbiology in Colorado, while another became a Phillips Petroleum engineer. I do well simply sorting through campaign fliers and poker hands.

(Only one person left an autograph in my Kindergarten yearbook -- and wow, my older brother had some stylish handwriting when he was 14.)

My neighborhood school had first and second grades in a separate building, which seemed to be a half-mile away. No, you Southerners -- that other building was never used to hold the African-American students.

First grade with Mrs. Brashears admittedly was a blur. On the first day of class, she quickly said something like, "Let's get down to business...." That set a very serious, high-pressure tone.

By comparison, second grade felt much easier for me. Mrs. Filmer showed a sense of humor at times. When the last member of the class marked a birthday in 1965, she said: "Now everybody's seven except me."

In either first or second grade, our class conducted a science experiment. Each student was given a small plant in a box, to care for along the window sill. Guess who was approached first with the dreaded words, "Your plant's dead!" Yes, I related well to those "Charlie Brown" cartoons....

Related to that, grade-school "recess sports" began during first and second grade. Most of the time, the captains chose me last. A couple of times I was taken "mid-list" -- which only proved which captains didn't know me very well.

We returned to the main school for third grade, and a teacher with plenty of enthusiasm and personality. Mrs. Snyder talked often about her children, and had a feud with a fifth-grade teacher over "Osage oranges" and hedge apples. Strangely, I've never heard of any apples being found around the hedges at Georgia's Sanford Stadium.

Mrs. Snyder got the class thinking with regular games of "Got It." Teams of rows (yes, we sat in old-fashioned rows) would send one person at a time to the chalkboard (yes, an old-fashioned chalkboard) to work complicated multi-digit math problems (yes, no calculators were around).

Now this was a game I could play well -- and classmates wanted what Mrs. Snyder called the "Walking Adding Machine" in their row, because I frequently did the math and "Got It" faster than anyone else. No wonder years later, a book on "talent discovery" said I missed my calling and should have become a bank teller.

But one day our row was badly lagging behind the others -- and when I came up later, I'd already done the math and figured we couldn't win. So I slowed down on purpose and let someone else in. No, I wasn't really being charitable -- I was acting more like Randy Moss in his days with the Minnesota Vikings.

Mrs. Snyder asked what happened to me. I explained with "full disclosure." She stopped the game right there, for a lecture on always giving your best. And we didn't even have to take CRCT exams in those days....

Third grade also found me in a few sessions away from class with Mrs. Dreiling, the school speech therapist. I forget now what my problem was -- but maybe it's come back, because no church has asked me to preach in years.

My fourth grade teacher was a stern disciplinarian named Mrs. Ducret. She insisted you pronounce Connecticut with all three C's, as in "connect-a-cut." Yet you didn't dare pronounce the T in her last name -- that was silent.

Mrs. Ducret had several moments where she ground the class to a halt for minutes at a time, to fill in a blank properly in a sentence. One memorable case involved "scouring powder" -- as too many of us had watched the TV commercials, and called it Comet.

That fourth-grade class marked the only time I've ever played the violin. A music teacher tried to inspire students to try out for the school orchestras, and took my hands in his to play a short piece of music. If he had called it a "fiddle," my country music-loving Dad might have accepted it.

Fourth grade also introduced me to the big-time competition of spelling bees. The future assistant professor and I were tops in the class, and she prevailed in a couple of "heads-up" meetings. But when all four fourth-grade classes came together, I was the champion! I was only 15th in the building bee -- but hey, I was a rookie.

But no, I was not always the perfect little boy. If the lunchroom became too loud, a teacher would blow a whistle and everyone would have to be silent from then on. I whispered too loudly to a girl one day and wound up "on The Line" -- staring away from everyone during midday recess. We only heard rumors about the Principal's paddle back then....

(Our series will continue in our next post on Wednesday.)

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