Chapter Three--Math

Kindergarten was tough, almost as tough as law school, and it was from way back then that I hated studying and I only "did well," when pushed. I frankly just didn't get the point of it - kindergarten, I mean. I remember the first day I arrived to the local village school. It was September, the first Monday in September. Sometime in the 70's. My mother had asked my grandmother to take me to school, and register me into class. Of course, granny was only happy to do it. I was her little pet, her little contessa. There was nothing she would not do for me.

I was only four years old. But I remember my first day of school for a number of reasons mostly because they had forgotten to put on my underpants and I was so too embarassed to point it out, so I just went to kindergarten without my underpants on that first day. It has always been strange how I could be so outspoken, yet so shy and inhibited when it comes to other things. I just held on tight to granny's hand, and kept my mouth shut and walked up the hill to my new school. Granny walked me straight to the headmistress's office. Her name was Ms. Tibbou. And she had a serious love affair with corporal punishment - aka, the belt. It was sitting there on her desk like a big black cobra. It's crazy but in the Caribbean, especially back then, teachers and administrators could beat other people's kids. I don't remember getting beat in Kindergarten. But I do remember getting beat, severely, in Junior 4 (Fourth grade), and this was in front of my father, and this was because I was a few minutes late for morning prayers.

But back to Kindergarten. As I said I was only four. I hadn't yet heard the word "lawyer." I didnt know then I wanted to be a lawyer. All I knew was I had no desire to do anything other than go back home and play. Bad reports went home to my parents from the start. It was Marion this, or Marion that. As if my parents hadn't heard it all before. They fully expected me to be a handful. I was an energetic child. What did these teachers expect? For me to actually sit?

I had half a note book. In those days, they would take a soft-covered notebook and cut it into two halves for the little kids in Kindergarten. Oh, wait. Kindergarten is an American word, isn't it? No, there, it was called Infants. They cut the note book in half for the infants. Frankly, I didn't do any work. I doodled. I goofed off. Kind of the way I approached my first semester in law school. I never sat in my chair. I peered out the window and, overall, did whatever it was that I pleased. The teachers ranked me last in achievement in Infants. They said I was immature, I couldn't write, could barely say my ABC's and most definitely could not count from one to ten if my life depended on it. If you talk to a couple of my law school professors, I wouldn't be surprised if they would say the same thing about me after the first year of law school. In my book, The Law School Rules, (which I wrote after the first year of law school) one can get a sense of just how traumatized I was by this momentous time and occassion.

My mother tolerated my antics in Kindergarten, I would say, for the entire year. But then, she drew the line when I moved from Infants to Junior One. I remember one night I came home. She asked, "Marion, do you have homework?" Homework?! I don't know! And she got out the belt. Just like that. And she said, "okay, if you don't have homework, I want to hear you recite your two times tables."
My two times tables?! I don't know! And she said, "Okay. Well, tonight you're going to learn." Tonight?! And that was the beginning of an oddessey with my mother, and her quest to have the most intelligent, most well behaved children in the whole village. With me, it was going to be a very tall order indeed.

Let's just say that by the time I went to bed that night, I knew all the tables my mother wanted me to know, and then some. And from that day forward, I was always first in my class, except in Junior 5, when my cousin Lester King placed first in a Math test, somebody placed second, my crush Vonroy placed third. And I placed fourth. It was the talk of the School. No, wait, what am I saying? It was the talk of the village. People were actually gleeful that I had fallen to fourth! I had never seen anything like it. Not only the children, but their parents were gleeful and almost threw a fete to celebrate my downfall. It came as a shock that people would enjoy my failure as much as they seemed to. I was devastated. Absolutely devastated. And inconsolable too.

I have always, and still to this day, hated Math.