I had a really sweet teacher for grades one, two, and three.
She had to put up with a few bad boys who probably ended up in juvenile detention by the time they were eight, and the federal penitentiary the second they turned eighteen.
Who could take a class of kids anywhere when you had even one nasty little boy to ruin everything, let alone two or three?
But she really liked the idea of field trips. After all, the small city teachers had field trips for their students, and so did the small towns.
So, my teacher took us to the woods.
Wonderful! My favorite place in the world!
Just down the road a bit, then follow the hot train tracks to a farm, down a lane hill and across a green field, and on and on until she decided that, "here we are, children."
We sat in the woods and ate our sandwiches and drank our warm sodas from the general store. The store owner was given our orders a few days before, so he could be sure and have enough of what we wanted without draining his supply.
I always sat near my teacher when we ate. She always had a huge, thick sandwich with canned salmon on it, so big she could hardly hold it.
I could never take my eyes off that sandwich.
I figured that a rich person could have a whole can of salmon on one sandwich and not go broke.
I figured that the ultimate, best thing in the world would be to grow up and be rich enough to put the whole can of salmon between two slices of bread, any old day you wanted to.
That was luxury.
To this day, no matter how much money I have had, I have never done that.
And I can't figure out why.
Because in my "little kid eyes", it's still got to be the best thing in the world.
She had to put up with a few bad boys who probably ended up in juvenile detention by the time they were eight, and the federal penitentiary the second they turned eighteen.
Who could take a class of kids anywhere when you had even one nasty little boy to ruin everything, let alone two or three?
But she really liked the idea of field trips. After all, the small city teachers had field trips for their students, and so did the small towns.
So, my teacher took us to the woods.
Wonderful! My favorite place in the world!
Just down the road a bit, then follow the hot train tracks to a farm, down a lane hill and across a green field, and on and on until she decided that, "here we are, children."
We sat in the woods and ate our sandwiches and drank our warm sodas from the general store. The store owner was given our orders a few days before, so he could be sure and have enough of what we wanted without draining his supply.
I always sat near my teacher when we ate. She always had a huge, thick sandwich with canned salmon on it, so big she could hardly hold it.
I could never take my eyes off that sandwich.
I figured that a rich person could have a whole can of salmon on one sandwich and not go broke.
I figured that the ultimate, best thing in the world would be to grow up and be rich enough to put the whole can of salmon between two slices of bread, any old day you wanted to.
That was luxury.
To this day, no matter how much money I have had, I have never done that.
And I can't figure out why.
Because in my "little kid eyes", it's still got to be the best thing in the world.
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