Stupid White Men-- and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! - Michael Moore [43]
“Why?” they asked.
“Couldn’t find a parking spot,” I replied, grabbing a Redpop and moving on with the rest of my life. I haven’t sat at a school desk since.
My dislike of school started somewhere around the second month of first grade. My parents—and God Bless Them Forever for doing this—had taught me to read and write by the time I was four. So when I entered St. John’s Elementary School, I had to sit and feign interest while the other kids, like robots, sang, “A-B-C-D-E-F-G ... Now I know my ABCs, tell me what you think of me!” Every time I heard that line, I wanted to scream out, “Here’s what I think of you—quit singing that damn song! Somebody get me a Twinkie!”
I was bored beyond belief. The nuns, to their credit, recognized this, and one day Sister John Catherine took me aside and said that they had decided to skip me up to second grade, effective immediately. I was thrilled. When I got home I excitedly announced to my parents that I had already advanced a grade in my first month of school. They seemed underwhelmed by this new evidence of my genius. Instead they let out a “WHAT THE—,” then went into the kitchen and closed the door. I could hear my mother on the phone explaining to the Mother Superior that there was no way her little Michael was going to be attending class with kids bigger and older than him, so please, Sister, put him back in first grade.
I was crushed. My mother explained to me that if I skipped first grade I’d always be the youngest and littlest kid in class all through my school years (well, inertia and fast food eventually proved her wrong on that count). There would be no appeals to my father, who left most education decisions to my mother, the valedictorian of her high school class. I tried to explain that if I was sent back to first grade it would appear that I’d flunked second grade on my first day—putting myself at risk of having the crap beaten out of me by the first graders I’d left behind with a rousing “See ya, suckers!” But Mom wasn’t falling for it; it was then I learned that the only person with higher authority than Mother Superior was Mother Moore.
The next day I decided to ignore all instructions from my parents to go back to first grade. In the morning, before the opening bell, all the students had to line up outside the school with their classmates and then march into the building in single file. Quietly, but defiantly, I went and stood in the second graders’ line, praying that God would strike the nuns blind so they wouldn’t see which line I was in. The bell rang—and no one had spotted me! The second grade line started to move, and I went with it. Yes! I thought. If I can pull this off, if I can just get into that second grade classroom and take my seat, then nobody will be able to get me out of there. Just as I was about to enter the door of the school, I felt a hand grab me by the collar of my coat. It was Sister John Catherine.
“I think you’re in the wrong line, Michael,” she said firmly. “You are now in first grade again.” I began to protest: my parents had it “all wrong,” or “those weren’t really my parents,” or ...
For the next twelve years I sat in class, did my work, and remained constantly preoccupied, looking for ways to bust out. I started an underground school paper in fourth grade. It was shut down. I started it again in sixth. It was shut down. In eighth grade I not only started the paper again, I convinced the good sisters to let me write a play for our class to perform at the, Christmas pageant. The play had something to do with how many rats occupied the parish hall and how all the rats in the country had descended on St. John’s Parish Hall to have their annual “rat convention.” The priest put a stop to that one—and shut down the paper again. Instead, my friends and I were told to go up on stage and sing three Christmas carols and then leave the stage without uttering a word. I organized half the