A new school

When we moved into our new house in town, we were somewhat outside the district for Hermosa Elementary School where Dad taught and where I had attended for four years and Loyd attended for one year. Someone had asked Dad if the new house was in the Hermosa district. He joked with his reply, "We're going to make it Hermosa."

The first day of school came. Loyd and I returned to Hermosa and were getting back in the groove. After the end of the second day, I went to the lobby where Dad would get us to drive us home. I saw Loyd looking around the library. I asked him what he was doing. "Oh, I'm just getting one last look around here."

"Why?"

"Because they're making us go to Central Elementary tomorrow."

I was shocked. I did not see this coming. I loved Hermosa. I had friends at Hermosa (or so I thought). I didn't want to leave. Dad had told us before school started that we didn't have to change schools. He was wrong.

Central Elementary was actually four blocks away from our house, so it kind of made more sense to go there. At the time, Central was the oldest elementary school in the state. It was considerably smaller than Hermosa, as each grade only had two classrooms, as opposed to three for Hermosa.

When I first showed up in class, I recognized some boys who used to go to Hermosa. Apparently, they had moved into this district sometime in the past. However, they acted like they didn't want anything to do with me. This was my first indication that things were not going to go well here.

All day in class, I kept hoping that someone was going to come along and say there was a mistake and I could go back to Hermosa. Every single day, I wished that I could go back, but it never happened. Even on the last day of school, I hoped that they would let me return just for that one day, but that didn't happen, either.

Just as I was somewhat adjusting to the situation after a few months, I found out that someone I went to Hermosa with had just moved into the Central district, but he still kept going to Hermosa. I felt like if Dad had not opened his big mouth and told everybody about our great new house, they wouldn't have forced Loyd and me to leave. (I realize now there was no getting around having to let the school district know where we lived.)

Years later, Dad said that if he'd known that he had the ability, he would have filed a lawsuit against the school system to keep us at Hermosa. Dad recognized that the move affected both Loyd and me academically and keeping us at Hermosa would have helped us to flourish. He also said that a few years later, they stopped forcing students to change schools just because their address had changed. I would point out that any lawsuit he filed against his employer would have put his job in jeopardy, even if the only desired result was just to get Loyd and me back in Hermosa.

There is so much bad stuff that happened during that year, I will have to devote a few individual chapters to it. However, I should say beforehand that despite me hating it at Central, I was actually thankful for the experience later on in my life. As noted above, I learned pretty quickly that I was not a popular as I thought I was. That was something I needed to know. I was going to go to Zia Intermediate School the next year, which was comprised of all the students from all the elementary schools. I was going to eventually find out my status among my fellow students. I was likely going to face other kids telling me, "Guess what? Your daddy's not around. We don't have to put up with your nonsense anymore." This way, I found out a whole year early and did not have to deal with that confrontation because they probably thought I had already learned my lesson the hard way. I did.