There Were A Lot Of Students In Our School

Tacoma had a good school system when I went there.  So when I put together realities that surround the fact that the school wanted me to skip fifth grade I have to include the fact that I was an early boomer.  Maybe they wanted to lighten the numbers in the fifth grade classroom.  My parents did not allow it.

I thought I must be smart for them to want me to skip.  But I knew they thought I was too large for the fifth grade desks.  They did have to bring a sixth grade desk into the fifth grade classroom for me.  In fifth grade I visited the eye doctor in the K Street District, the teachers and staff never noticed that in Fourth Grade I could not see the blackboard the way I was able to see the blackboard in Third Grade.  My grades were the same, because I did the work at my desk and could listen.  But I squinted my eyes together to try to see.  I did not find the courage to tell my mother I thought I needed glasses until Fifth Grade.

I know they saw I was too large but did not see that I had trouble seeing.  That happened to the boomers – there were probably a lot of lapsed applied effort that should have been made on our behalf, but there were so many that they did not have people to do this.  The school did a lot of things for us.