Upheld in Starting School

In the face of so many personal tragedies and national disasters, I thought maybe a bit of levity could be a good thing right now.

Back To School

I admit, I can’t remember my first day of school. I am in the age category that can say, “It was just TOO long ago!” I can remember walking home from kindergarten; riding my bike with one training wheel and hearing my Grandma say, “She certainly does lean, doesn’t she?” And I remember making and eating mudpies in my cute little red and blue sun dresses. But I don’t remember the first day of school.

The Swindler

However, I DO remember how the kid who sat next to me swindled me of my pop beads in the first grade! Nasty twit!

We brought pop beads to school to help us to learn to count. Math made easy. Sort of.

My Mom bought me a lot of them because I liked to pop and unpop the different colors together to make necklaces and bracelets. It was all the rage among mid-1950s first grade girls. So I had a bagful.

The Elusive Twinkies

Every day the boy sitting next to me had twinkies in his lunch. I didn’t. I coveted his twinkies. He coveted my pop beads. After all, he would be pretty cool (or whatever we called it then) if he could have the most pop beads of anybody in the class.

An enterprising youth, he put this proposition before me, “I’ll bring more twinkies tomorrow if you’ll give me some of your pop beads today. I promise.” (Anbody hear echoes of Popeye’s friend Wimpy? “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!)

Oh, how covetness leads us astray. I eagerly agreed and handed over a portion of my pop beads.

The next day, he had no twinkies. How disappointing. However, he positively promised to bring twinkies the next day if I would give him more pop beads. I agreed. Yep, the gullible fool that I was. I ended up with very few pop beads and never did see any twinkies!

Lesson Learned

As the saying goes, “A fool is soon parted from his money.” Or her pop beads.

Such was my experience in first grade. It scarred me for life!