| My sister was on the verge of starting high school, I just made the jump to middle school. One night while writing for an assignment, her friend stopped by and we talked. He knew me as 'Little
Schliefke', as I was the younger Schliefke and in the midst of a six year long growing drought that left me at 5'4". I called him Big Joel. In his jovial manner and no uncertain terms, he told me school wasn't worth worrying about, and offered two words of advice to follow - "Fuck it".
With that, my attitude towards school unraveled. My grades, while still enrolled in all the top, 'college prep' classes, began a steady decline, and my attitude and participation in class slipped dramatically. I stopped doing homework, never studied for tests, and started finding ways to skip classes and work the dull system to my advantage. I distanced myself from the top college bound students, because I realized I didn't want to be like them. My uncle gave me the nickname 'Po' for my unused potential, and my
worried parents looked on as the one who was straying from the path.
I looked through my old yearbooks and took note of the grades I received over the years. The grades back up the slip in attitude: with a dramatic tumble through high school. I'm still haunted by nightmares of having to go through one more year of school because I missed a math credit, and I'm never able to pass to graduate.
AVERAGE GRADES FROM FIRST TO TWELFTH GRADE
Here are some other stories that I recalled while flipping through my yearbooks:
In kindergarten, I was chastised by my teacher while making a hand puppet. I wanted to make a wolf. Using light blue felt as a background, I gave him ears and some pointy claws. I also put strips of yellow yarn act as the space between his legs. My teacher and I got into an argument when she called my yarn obscene. I stood up and motioned with a up and down motion between my legs telling her over and over, "No, it's this." I understood space, but couldn't describe it, and her dirty little repressed brain
thought I was gluing a penis on my kindergarten project. As evidenced by the photograph at the start of this story, I won.
While in fifth grade, the teachers of the Milford school system were threatening a strike and staged a couple sick outs to increase their bargaining position. Sick outs meant substitutes, which meant no work, so I was on their side. I somehow was able to draft an over the top Swift-ian paper for an assignment encouraging the teachers to 'put their health first' and stay home and 'take two aspirin' and not risk spreading their illness to the children. My parents thought the paper was distasteful, my teacher gave me an A.
The three professions that I was most suited for a career in, according to a test administered in 1992 to all high school juniors at Milford High School as preparation for the outside world:
+ Visual Artist
+ Librarian
+ Shepherd
A couple comments written from my kindergarten teacher in my final report card from the Niskayuna, NY Public School System:
"Michael almost always follows the rules. Once in a while he will get carried away while playing."
"Michael has developed excellent listening skills"
"Michael is a very neat worker"
"Michael loves books. He brings in many books from home and can't wait to go to the library each week"
"Michael is always willing to share his ideas with the class"
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