My first grade teacher was named Mrs. Schuester.  She was a Yankee from Boston.  She pronounced fine with a long “i”. So I did too.  My mother thought that was funny.  She was older than my mother, so she seemed old to me.  

A hot lunch cost 25 cents back then.  A quarter.  We had fish sticks on Fridays to accommodate the Catholic kids, even though it was a public school.  The Jewish kids got to take their own holidays in addition to the Christian ones. It’s funny how we all used to get along that way.  

One day we were standing in line waiting to march to the cafeteria like a little miniature army battalion.  As an aside, I don’t like putting kids in lines.  They still do that.  I guess it is better that a stampede or a melee, but there is something very prison-like to me about putting little kids in line.

Anyway, we were standing in line waiting to go to the cafeteria. Mrs. Schuester had put two book cases back to back to make sort of an entry way into her class room. They were stuck together somehow, maybe nailed.  I was standing there in that darn line waiting for the rest of the little soldiers to fall into place.  While I was waiting for the others, I rolled my quarter around on the top of the bookshelves.  Oops.  That dang quarter slipped in between those two stuck together bookshelves.  I should have kept my mouth shut and either gone hungry or eaten off of someone else’s plate.  What happened next changed my life forever. For it labeled me.  I am a nuisance.  That is what Mrs. Schuester said when she called the custodian, who had to stop throwing that pink stuff on kids’ vomit long enough to come to our class room to unstick those book cases to get my quarter out.  Why didn’t she just give me a quarter and ask me to bring two the next day?