A Beautiful, Lie.

A Beautiful, LieI remembering transitioning from elementary school to what we then referred to as Junior High School. My children and the children of my friends tell me nowadays it is more commonly known as, “Middle School.” No matter what is called today or may be called tomorrow, in those days, in that part of the world, and particularly in the Beautiful Independent School District (BISD) it was, Junior High School.Junior High was a different experience from that to which I’d been accustomed. It was a big change. Every class was held in a different room. There was no, one teacher, we would spend a majority of the day with. So many new faces and we now found ourselves competing for space in the restrooms, band hall, gym, the hallway, and every where else, with kids that were much older than we were.Just as is true in any community, some of the folks with whom we worked, students, teachers, and staff alike, were just wonderful, some of them were just awful, and most where somewhere on the scale between those two poles. One of the great things about Junior High School was the liberating truth that if a teacher truly was awful, and some really were, one only had, for the most part, a single class that had to be endured each day rather than being interred for the full school day with a single rotten teacher.On the first day of the new school year when I entered the sixth grade, my first year in Junior High School, an assembly of the students was called. We were instructed on how the school system in Texas was funded and that it was important that we attend school every single day so the school would receive the monies it needed from the state.As an incentive, our principal promised us that every single student who achieved perfect attendance that year would be awarded two silver dollars. I knew what silver dollars were. Both of my grandfathers, at different times, had expressed to me the value of silver and demonstrated to me the difference in silver coins versus those made of less valuable alloys. The promise of two silver dollars really motivated me to attend school every single day, no matter what!To hear the full story, please click the link to listen above.Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hankgriffin.substack.com/subscribe