Even to this day, I do not know why my mom (Dolores) had pushed me so hard and had me learn so much in such a small amount of time. I was about to start kindergarten and my mom and I were out enjoying the weather and walking to the store. (My mom liked to walk everywhere,) I remember her going over the days of the week and wanting me to say them in order. The deal had been that if I had said the order of the days of the week, she was going to get me a BUTTER FINGER and a juice. So by the time that we had gotten to the store and near the candy, I said the days of the week properly and got my juice and candy bar. When we were walking home and I had eaten the candy bar already, my mom had asked me to tell her the days of the week and I had forgotten. Our game had been over and I had won the prize, she was furious and then she started a new game that I did not like. I had until we got home to re-name the days of the week or she was going to spank me with the belt, I was lying on the bed and had been hit twice before I was about to be hit again and I was able to say the days of the week. She had called me into the kitchen and proudly had me recite the days of the week to Roger when he had gotten off work, and Then she had decided that I was going to start kindergarten knowing how to tie my shoes. My first few attempts were not very good because I would just tie my shoes in a big knot. (I was little and did not grasp the concept of what she had been trying to show me with all of the complicated loops and swoops ,) she had gotten pissed and threatened to send me to my room if I did not pay attention to what she was showing me. She did end up hitting me once because she had trouble undoing one of my knots and that night one of Roger's friends came over and he had shown me his technique once, then I had done it perfectly. My mom had been pissed but his technique was a lot easier than hers loop, Swoop and Pull. When I was younger SESAME STREET had a book collection and I eventually had all 20, These books contained stories that involved each of the individual characters as well as games. Don't get me wrong, I did not like the show but I liked the characters. I had first began to collect the books before I had began kindergarten and before I could read, My mom did not mind buying books for me cause I would sit quietly and look at the pictures for hours. I have always had a good imagination. Anyway, I liked to look at the pictures and my favorite was the COOKIE MONSTER. (He was blue and that has always been my favorite color.) Whenever My mom would read one of the stories to me I would want to hear one involving the COOKIE MONSTER. I had been read his stories so many times that I had the stories memorized and knew what was going to happen by looking at each of the pictures. It did not take my mom a long time to figure out what I was doing and she made it clear that I was not allowed to look at my SESAME STREET books anymore, until I learned to read. (My mom had me reading at a 4th grade level before the end of my first grade year. She would take care of my little sister and when I came home from school, the two of us would sit down and work on my reading until it became time to start making Rodger's dinner. I loved my mom so much back then, I really did. I just always seemed to be the one she would both lose her temper and then physically take her anger out on with whatever object was within her reach. (This would go on until I was 17 and realized that I was bigger and stronger than she was.) I remember learning cursive in the first grade, My mom had gone and gotten about 20 of those note pads that are specifically designed to learn to write letters and numbers. I had to sit in my room and practice writing over and over again until I had it down.
I had a nice brand new desk as well as a dry-erase board and tons of paper and other supplies but hey, I was a young kid and did not appreciate those things. I wanted more toys lol. When I was in trouble with school my mom would go through my room with garbage bags and fill them with all my toys and keep only the desk which had been filled with school supplies, my clothes in my closet and my bed were the only things left in my room. This happened often and of course I was confined and only allowed out of the room for dinner or to go to the bathroom so I began to like being at school and hated for the school day to end. There had been a time where I hated to walk into that house and would even take the back way home even though the kids around there kept taking my jackets and things that were in my backpack numerous times. Math was a hard subject for me from the start and one day when I was in the third grade I had decided that I hated it. My mom would sit me down at the kitchen table and she had gone over some of my math with me and she would tell me how to do it and I would get the problem right, we did other problems when she would come back to the original problem I could not get the answer right. She would show me how to do it again and when we had came back to it I could never do it, My mom would lose her temper and would go to get 1 of Rodger's belts. I remember how my knees always began to wobble as I watched her lay the belt down on the kitchen table. (I guess she thought that I had been just playing games with her and was trying to upset her,) she had re-written the problem and told me to solve it as she stood behind me and looked over my shoulder. Talk about being nervous and not being able to think straight, I could not remember every step that I had needed to do in order to solve the problem. She would grab the belt off the table and put one hand on my shoulder while hitting me hard with the belt, she had me try to solve the problem a few more times each ending with me getting the problem wrong. My mom hitting me with the belt. Finally, she must have gotten tired and told me to go to bed. I remember climbing into bed when it was still light out. Math continued to be a weak spot for me for the rest of my time in school and it had gotten to the point where my mom had done all of my math homework for me. Don't get me wrong, I was not the best behaved boy and my mom's tactics had gotten me to get good grades but why did my mom go through those tactics? I will never know.
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