The Third Grade:

   I grew up in a Los Angeles California Suberb called Torrance. I attended a grade school off Carson St. Called Jefferson Elementary. School would prove to be a difficult experience for me over all but by the third grade my undiagnosed A.D.H.D was causing me teacher problems but two things happened that year that would end my involvement with school. The first thing was this: There were three third grade classes at Jefferson Elm. One day about 2/3rds of the way through the year they decided to combine all three classes for one afternoon in one room for some reason. I don't know why, they had never done it before and they never did again. They'd moved all the chairs out and put this big carpet on the floor and made us kids sit in rows on this carpet. I was just sitting there, minding my own business. Suddenly this teacher from one of the other classes that I didn't know, singles me out and starts yelling at me to come to the front. I have no idea what's going on but I go up to her. She jerks me around, facing all those kids and starts violently shaking me back and forth (snapping my head so bad I couldn't turn my head for about four days) and telling all those kids that terrible young people like me are the reason our country is going to Hell, and what a bad kid I am, on and on, blah blah blah... Then she tosses me over to the corner of the room where she has a single chair set behind an easel and I sit there for the remainder of that class. After the class ends and all the kids leave, she tells me I can go but a friend who was sitting next to me goes up to that teacher and tells her I hadn't done anything wrong and had been sitting there quietly. So she apologizes to me. Great. I get publicly humiliated but a private apology,
     The other thing that happened was that in my class the DUMB ASS teacher thought it would be a swell idea to have a different kid be the "class president" each week and let the kids vote in the next president. I'm only a third grader but my brain tells me: "Oh great, let's see: The popular kids will take care of themselves first and then it's gonna cycle down until the least popular kids are going to get to find out just how unpopular they are". She could have pulled kids names out of a hat each week, something like that but Noooooo. So, what happens? Of the 32 kids in that class I'm picked dead last. They even chose the semi retarded kid before me.
   And that was when school and I went our separate ways. 

   I learned that they don't want me there. I don't want to be there. All my friends were desert motorcycle racer kids anyway and those guys liked me just fine so I didn't need school friends (my dad was a desert motorcycle racer in those days but I'll get to all that later). Besides the fact, by that point I was teaching myself how to play the guitar and that was going pretty well so I understood that I could teach myself whatever I needed to know, I didn't need school. Of course you still have to attend it (It's the law) but I refused to take part in anything that went on at school from then on. I still had a couple of friends there, most notibly my friend Daryl who lived a few blocks from me. Otherwise I stayed away from them and they stayed away from me and that's how I liked it.
Oh, things would get much worse over the years at Hell... I mean school..