Chapter 50

Looking at Rodney something clicked. There is a pecking order established among boys around middle school. Rodney had been bigger than me, both in height and weight. I was now at least three inches taller and forty pounds heavier.

I filed that thought away for future consideration. I didn’t want to be a bully like him, but at the same time, I didn’t have to be bullied.

I also wondered if I could get fighting lessons somewhere, I knew they had golden glove boxing in Columbus, and in the movies, they showed mysterious techniques like Judo.

In a small town, we had none of that. A fight would be a pushing, shoving match with a black eye and bloody nose thrown in for good measure. Fighting lessons were something else to think about, maybe when I was in California for the movie.

Classes were almost incidental to the day. I attended, handed in the work required, knowing I had the next day’s assignments finished. During class where I could, I read or worked problems ahead. My teachers knew I was doing this and seemed to be okay with it.

On a rare occasion when we were officially working on problems, I would raise my hand for help. The help I was requesting was on future lessons, but help was given with no comment.

Study Halls were spent writing essays that would never be turned in. I had one interesting learning experience several weeks ago, my world history teacher Mr. MacMillan asked me to see him after class. I wondered what I had done. It was what I wasn’t doing.

The essays I had been handing in were a common variety of high school plagiarism. You would go to the referenced text and copy the words, always citing that text in your bibliography. Ninety-nine percent of all essays would only have one reference in the bibliography.

He asked me if I was ready to take it to the level demanded in college. I told him yes while having absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He was ready for me, he pulled out a paper he had done in college; he also had the reference texts. He had me read the text, then what he had written.

He had written in his own words what he thought the message was and “cited” specific statements in the text to support his assertions. I see where he used citations from several books to form an argument against what was being taught.

So besides having the title of the book, author, publisher, and dates he would have the specific page and paragraph identification. This was a whole new level!

He told me, “Rick you show great promise as a student and scholar, please try this method. It will not hurt your grade in any way I promise. If nothing else it will give you a firmer understanding of the material.”

I did try it and was blown away by what I was seeing. Now having to think about what the author had written I was questioning the facts and conclusions. This led me to look at the author’s bibliography.

Very quickly I learned to have little faith in poorly researched work. If the book had no bibliography I didn’t even bother but would hunt up other books.

This took time, so much time that I quit trying to do every essay question at the back of the text. I spent my time doing a quality job on one issue. This spread out to my other classwork, where ever there was an essay type question.

I was asked about this change by several teachers, I referred them back to Mr. MacMillan.

Miss Bales told me, “It’s a shame we don’t have a grade higher than ‘A-plus,’ you would receive it.”

She continued, “This is college-level work, I have read in my professional journal that there is a move underfoot to have advanced classes in high school for which you can receive college credit; your work would qualify.”

Yeah, I had a fat head for the rest of the afternoon that day. Mary took care of it when I walked in the door that evening when she came out with, “Hola, gran hermano.”

My four-year-old sister was speaking Spanish! I recognized the Hello, but not the rest. I asked her, she giggled she explained,

“Hello, big brother.”

At least she didn’t tell me I had a big nose as I feared.

I asked her where she was learning Spanish, “From Mrs. Hernandez next door silly.”

I immediately asked Mum who Mrs. Hernandez was.

“She just moved in with her husband’s brother’s family the Wingers, her husband is in jail in Cuba and she had to flee the country.