I went to a small private school for the deaf in Shoreline when I was in elementary and middle school. The school was a day school, not like one of the state residential schools so I’d have to endure an hour long trek everyday along with other deaf students in my district. I was under the Issaquah (Is-sa-qwah) School District, and the hourly commute one way was my opportunity to socialize with these two or three students. We’d play with Hot Wheels and race them down the aisle when the bus was about to go uphill. We’d also play with marbles and literally find every single way to piss off our bus driver. Some of them hated us, but others loved us no matter what we did. They were mostly mean drivers from what I can remember as a kid. There was this one sweet driver always had a “candy day” every Monday as she’d give each pieces of candies after school for some reason I cannot recall right now.
As we pulled up into the school every morning, we’d see other students in their buses and we’d always pull down the windows and sign to each other until the drivers let us off. Our school was very small, having up to maybe 60 students at the most in a year. The classroom only consisted of six students and two teachers, on average. Pretty small ratio compared to public schools.
There have been so so so many weird and hilarious situations that have happened here. I’ve heard stories, some of them hilarious as I cried at the end of these. I’ll probably tell some of them occasionally on here.
Let me start one off with pre-school. I have a few friends with whom I still remain fairly close to this day. I’m still in touch with nearly the entire class back them, with one or two exceptions. There was one “bad” boy in our class, Eli, he wasn’t a bully but he was overly assertive and teachers were always keeping an eye on him since he was quite…mean back then. There’s another kid, Cal, who was supposed to go to RIT in New York with me but he actually got a really good job and decided to stay behind. He’s not the brightest but he’s pretty smart, sneaky even. Especially in this case. Cal and Eli fought often, as did all students in pre-school over toys and not sharing. Cal was well aware of Eli’s reputation as he was getting in trouble all the time but one time, Cal, reached in front of his desk and grabbed the whole thing. And threw himself down to the ground, taking his desk and chair with him right when Eli walked by. All this made a huge crashing sound, as the teachers and students turned their heads to see Cal on the ground with his desk and chair down and Eli standing there.
You can only imagine what happened next, right? The teachers went crazy over it and sentenced Eli to a few minutes of solitaire in the corner, ignoring the pleas that he didn’t do it. They had heard it before, only this time he wasn’t lying.
Years later, we were talking during lunch and Eli brought it up. We laughed so hard that we were literally crying as Eli still could not understand how a three year old kid had enough smarts to pull that stunt on purpose to get him in trouble. The funny thing is that Cal doesn’t even remember it. These good old school days, where kids outsmart each other. Think that’s funny? Wait til you hear the peanut story. But that’s another story for another time. See you later!
toshibastravels 