I passed to the fourth grade on trial. I still have the report card to prove it, though I'm not at all sure why I have kept it all these years. Anyway, when I began fourth grade I discovered the most boring, humorless teacher of my brief academic career. Ironically, her name was Mrs. Lance.

She expected us to copy her outlines of social studies from the blackboard (yes, they were black in the old days) to our papers. I found the tedium so inhibiting that I never seemed to get my work done. I was certain that my education was about to be impaled by Mrs. Lance.

For some reason I have never known, Mrs. Lance had to leave in the middle of the semester. God is good! Enter Miss Gardette. She soon became my educational savior. Miss Gardette was determined to make us interested enough to learn. She discovered that I had a vivid imagination, and she went to work on me.

I was encouraged to write silly, outrageous stories and read them to the class. My classmates were amused and seemed to enjoy my performances. So there was something in school that I could do with success. In God's wonderful providence Miss Gardette also moved with our class to the fifth grade, and again to the sixth grade. When we left Rockdale Elementary for Junior High School, Miss Gardette also left to get married. I would like to have met her later in life and thank her, but since I'm such an aged codger now, she has probably been laid to rest for many years.

Opportunities to write have met me all along the way since those days. Because my composition appeared in the creative arts program in high school, I was given the option to opt out of the regular English curriculum, and I took journalism. Turns out that Manual Arts High School was the only high school west of the Rockies to publish a daily paper, and I had a place on the staff. I still like to write and therefore here I am launching my blogging career with this recital of unlikely personal history. I hope someone reads it and enjoys it.