FOURTH GRADE

Sixth grade pool party.

I arrived at the new school in August of 1978, 7, smashingly handsome I’m sure, with a mouth full of Chiclets and I imagine trepidation. To be clear I remember nothing about second grade except for my teacher’s name, Mrs. Burns, and the fall Halloween carnival at the school, Green Acres Elementary, where I won a dance contest on that cool October night. 

Third grade isn’t filled with much more in the “vivid stories” department other than Mrs. Dilworth’s class and my first experience of teacher oppression. In the first weeks of the fall of ‘79, Mrs. Dilworth had to take a day off or maybe even multiple days if memory serves and we had a substitute teacher. Third graders are nothing more than middle elementary school hyenas, the worst humans on earth besides actual middle schoolers.  We smelled blood and launched ourselves at the haunches of our prey for 2-3 days straight. Upon returning, Mrs. Dilworth, normally just mostly dissatisfied with the world, was bent. Our freedom to speak in class was removed for the rest of the year. Seven months of no talking was indeed an eternity we couldn’t fathom enduring. Somehow  we survived, but I imagine PE was a shit show everyday, Mrs. Dilworth to blame. 

Every school has “the nicest teacher ever” as well as the “worst”. Green Acres had two of the best and at least two of the worst, the aforementioned Mrs. Dilworth, and fifth grades Mrs. McGeehee, a woman I hated for no good reason and who I once told to “drop dead” on a leisurely exit from class one spring day (sorry about that Mrs. McGeehee, I was angst).  As the summer before fourth grade approached, my non praying self aimed his gapped tooth face to the heavens and asked the powers that be to please dear God give me Mrs. Cuccaro, best teacher number one at Green Acres. Through the power of temporary faith, my wish was granted (I also ended up getting “best teacher #2”, Mrs. Jones, for 6th grade, praise Jesus).  

As it’s been forty years since I had Mrs. Cuccaro, I don’t really remember all of the things that made her the best, I just knew that she was. Maybe “best” in 1980 was simply “nicest”. I want to say that we, the turds of Mrs. Dilworth’s banished third grade class, rewarded Mrs. Cuccaro with exemplary behavior, gluing things well within the lines, not talking out too much, keeping that god awful fluoride rinse in our mouths, swishing for the required time, backs to the outside wall of the school like some tooth decay fighting POW’s. Fourth grade was , as the kids of 2007 would say, “the bomb dot com”.  Mrs. Cuccaro was responsible. 

It is also not lost on me that Mrs. Cuccaro was also responsible for bringing a dark brown haired angel into the world, the crush of my then so short life, her daughter Kim. For fourth grade and most of fifth grade, I was madly in love with Kim Cuccaro. 

I know it was these two years for sure and likely  some of sixth grade as well, but there was also Deborah Lehr, who was “going with” Carly Smith, the first of many “other guys girlfriends” I fell in love with. Even at the height of my sixth grade Deborah Lehr love, I know that if Kim came a calling, I’d have dropped my copy of the Outsiders and killed a kid for her, had she asked. 

Unrequited fourth grade love is tough. I got my appendix out that year, a feat I figured would buy me some sympathy love from Kim, but none was acquired. The other thing about fourth grade love is the very real fact that it isn’t spoken of. You love in  silence, heart racing, wishing there was a way that they’d know, wondering if  Dennis DeYoung of Styx wrote Babe about the two of you, and all the other things fourth and fifth grade boys do. I’m sure I tried to impress her otherwise, but can’t remember my moves, praying yet again to those angels, Jesuses and so forth that somehow Kim Cuccaro would absorb this love through osmosis and return it. It never happened. 

After sixth grade I moved on from Green Acres to attend an all boys school, the last few weeks of sixth grade spent wondering if I’d ever see these people again. It was the second time in my short life that I’d been faced with this, having arrived from Michigan, four short years prior. I remember that during the last or near to last day of school, hanging from the monkey bars by myself and crying over it. Moments later, I decided to give the old bars a last pass, skipping every other bar, hand over hand, like usual. In my crying state, I missed the bar, fell flat to the ground and knocked the air completely out of my lungs, giving me something to really cry about. 

Later that day I got one of the only “school class” birthday parties I’d had. Having a June birthday, the celebration always came and went without fanfare, buried deep in the heat of a Mississippi summer. Since I was leaving the school my mom set up a swimming party at my house with all the kids in my class, Kim Cuccaro included. 

I know Kim was there because yesterday I received a letter from the best fourth grade teacher on Earth. Mrs. Cuccaro saw my blog post about Pirate Ave. a couple of weeks back. I think her other lovely daughter Leslie, who lives in Baton Rouge may have happened upon it and shared it with her. It was a short saying she’d read it and had found a picture from  my house on Pirate Ave. It warmed me to the core as has the recollection of that fourth grade love, unrequited, due to never speaking it aloud. 

While the world and the internet can be cruel places full of the worst of us, these are the things that make it awesome. 

#hugsandhi5s