Coerced Gamer

The day I was forced into the public school system by grownups who were just adhering to federal law, my unwitting underground career as a gamer began. Mom had walked me to school a few days earlier: out the backdoor of our house, through the back gate, turning left and a down the alley a half a block, then right onto South Oak Avenue and a half block of sidewalk to the street corner where a careful crossing placed me at the school. I was excited.

That is, I was until class began and it became painfully apparent that the school wasn't about learning, it was about conforming. That stark realization horrified and sickened me to the core. So before first recess was over, I found a nice cubbyhole in a shrub where I could hide.

The bell rang and all the already-indoctrinated kids dutifully stampeded back into the school building, but I stayed put and waited, breathing quietly, watching, listening. Shortly, two teachers came out onto the playground looking for me and calling my name. It took every ounce of restraint I had to not laugh outloud as their search effort became increasingly frantic. They got pretty close to where I was hiding in the shrub and still didn't spot me there.

They eventually had to give up the search, going back inside to tend to all the good little conformists sitting expectantly in their little desks waiting to read more about Dick and Jane. Cautiously, I emerged and walked as nonchalantly as I could back toward home. But before I left the school grounds, I smelled hot rolls cooking and veered toward the irresistible aroma.

A friendly lunch lady greeted me with a hearty "Good morning!". I returned the greeting and then unabashedly asked if I could have a hot roll. She laughed and asked if my mama didn't feed me. I assured me she did, and she handed me a roll. I thanked her and walked on, nibbling at the roll with great relish. At the corner I crossed so as to avoid getting too close to the house where I had been warned by my mother and by neighborhood kids that a child molester lived. I wondered what a child molester looked like, whether they looked odd.

Making it safely back to the alley, I sauntered along, enjoying the cool morning air, to the gate and freedom. Everything looked so vivid and smelled so wonderful, feeling no regrets.

Of course, that freedom did not last and I was forced back into the time-wasting, mind-numbing twelve-year stint compulsorily attending public schools–gaming them all to the max to merely earn adequate grade points and minimal class hours required by law to declare the horrific ordeal a done deal upon graduation at age seventeen. And even though I admired Dewy for his brillant decimal system, I despised the horrible perversion of his public school system vision. If it had been up to me, I'd have fared better being allowed to go to the library any time I wanted to, using the Dewy Decimal System to access knowledge unbounded instead of listening to boring lectures on banal subject matter I was then expected to regurgitate during tests for a grade. I learned nothing there of any value at all that I hadn't already learned outside school, where all meaningful learning actually happens.