Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir (5 page)

O
UR PRIMARY CATHEDRAL
of public learning in Lawrenceburg was imaginatively named Lawrenceburg Public School. It was the beginning of the educational journey for many enthusiastic, lovable little tykes eager to learn. There were also some kids like me.

In his “Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth writes of the innocent insight of children, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the world. He obviously never met Mrs. Maude’s first-grade class—or Mrs. Maude, for that matter. Human survival instincts kick in at a very early age, and for an obstreperous lad in Mrs. Maude’s room, pain aversion was the highest priority. There are any number of things that might assault the senses or the dignity of the untamed first-grader, such as a steely-eyed warning, a verbal lashing, or the paddle. Therefore, strategies were needed. As the year wore on and I developed more sophistication, I learned that if my offense was not too severe, instead of a paddling Mrs. Maude
would banish me to the cloakroom. That, of course, was like throwing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch. I would take an adequate number of coats off the hook, make myself a bed and a pillow, and take a nap. I missed much class participation this way, but my absence seemed to be a sacrifice that Mrs. Maude was often willing to make.

They say that school inspires certain precocious kids to set goals early in life. This was certainly true of me. Every day my goal was to get the heck out of school and get back home as soon as possible.

Over the next several months, I stoically muddled my way through. Actually, Lawrenceburg Public was not all that bad. It was a medium-security facility with home-visitation privileges, and when the food was too bad, with the cunning of a seasoned inmate, I always had ways of disposing of it. Spinach served at lunch could be slipped off the plate and into the pocket, later to be transferred to the book satchel and taken home. Displaying, even then, a rank inability to cover up my misdeeds, I would usually forget about the spinach and have to explain to my mother once again how the spinach accidentally found its way into the book satchel. It was the most consistent exercise of my imagination.

All things considered, it was a fairly typical, sometimes tension-filled, but more often carefree few years. I was able to get a few laughs, draw some pretty good cartoons, and even learn a number of things. As time rolled on, a pudgy, little uninterested Freddie Thompson grew to become a
taller, slimmer uninterested Freddie Thompson, who wondered why the teachers always looked at him when something went wrong. Perhaps it was because I was the one who turned on the fire alarm one day and caused the entire school to bolt out onto the playground. Who knows? Occasionally, I was even innocent, so I resented being picked on.

Kids are introduced to the real grown-up world through their grade-school teachers, and I had the full array of heroines and villains, at least in my youthful eyes. I still remember one moment of supreme validation. I’d told my mother that my black-haired third-grade teacher, who was immune to my charms, looked like an old black rooster. Sometime later in the year, my mom came home laughing. She’d been to a parent-teacher conference, and as she was talking to this teacher, it dawned on her that my description fit her to a tee; it was all she could do to keep from breaking up in laughter. Of course, Mom was making a terrible mistake by telling me this, but I loved her dearly for it.

My penchant for horseplay was exceeded only by my ineptitude. On one occasion when I thought no one was looking and the class was being led down the steps to lunch, I proceeded to stomp each step as I descended, creating the noise that was intended. My teacher was waiting at the bottom and yelled, “Freddie!” I immediately replied, “I wasn’t stomping the steps.”

I had a wonderful fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson. She actually laughed at some of the funny things I would say.
(Even then, this was the way I judged a woman.) However, unbeknownst to her, she totally screwed up my sense of direction forever. She had this huge map of the United States hung on the wall. Of course, we were taught that “up” on the map was north. The problem was that the map was hung on the south wall of the classroom, the direction of Ma and Pa Bradley’s home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. So for years when I visualized the location of a state, I did it by thinking of the map in the classroom. When I related it to the real world, like on a trip to my grandparents’ house, in my mind north was actually south. I don’t have to tell you what that did to east and west. Of course, the lesson I took away from this at the time was that stuff you learned in the classroom didn’t really apply to the real world.

Perhaps of interest to educators the world over is the fact that the only thing I remember from the fifth grade is that, once a day, Mrs. Newton would read to us from a Nancy Drew mystery. I became absorbed in these stories even to the extent of checking some additional ones out of the library. It was probably the first time I had actually read anything in order to get information. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I had to smile years later when I heard Supreme Court Justice O’Connor and Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor talk about how, as young girls, this smart, courageous young Nancy Drew inspired them with an example of a girl capable of doing great things. So it seems that
Nancy Drew inspired Freddie Thompson and many young girls everywhere. Young Fred would have been mighty chagrined to know that. He didn’t think about the boy-girl stuff. He just wanted to know what was in the “old clock.”

While I was still in grade school I decided I needed to have my own “walking-around money.” I figured that a fellow never knows when he will run across a business deal that he can’t afford to pass up. Besides, I thought it was past time for me to be able to flash a roll of bills like they do in the movies. So I found a job as a carhop at the local Dairy Dip, the main (and only) drive-in hot spot in town. Although I was basically working for tips, the Dairy Dip, with its heavy traffic, could make me a killing, I figured. The only problem was that the Dip, as advertised, had wonderful hot dogs and shakes, and employees did not get a discount. You can see where this is going. So, although I made a few bucks every night in tips, I was eating more in hot dogs, shakes, and other stuff than I was bringing in. I had become not only an employee of the Dairy Dip but one of its best customers, and I was losing money on the deal.