I was organizing my filing cabinet the other night and I came across a big fat file full of Jamie Stuff. It was mostly his report cards and pictures he’d drawn and cards he’d given me over the years.
And then there was this Punishment Paper. Some teacher made him write it for not paying attention in class. It’s dated October 1991: he had just turned nine.
“I may fool around alot but I am still paying attention to class. And I don’t do it to anoy you and I don’t to it to get you mad and I dont do it to get you angry. It is just that my hands need something to do when I am listining. And sometimes I am really bored and I Fidget around. And my mom said that I have always been very very Figety for a long long time. And I think you will get used to it soon so dont worry about it. I talk in class alot because I have always talked alot for a long time and I talk alot at home and I ask lot alots of questions.
I am going to bring in about three pictures of some cute ground hogs for my ground hog project. Why do we have to do the project in order. I promise that I will try not to fidget and fool around and try and do all my work at school so that I will not have any home work to take home for the rest of the year okay? And math is fun sometimes when it is solving riddle and other little things like that are really really fun for me! So I hope I get some of that kind of math soon! I think that language arts is pretty fun and the twenty senteces are pretty difficult but not too hard for me. The Math papers crosswords word searches are quite fun if you ask me. I think we should get into doing thousand subtraction very very soon because the three didget subtraction is too easy for me. To tell you the truth I think we should do multiplication and division. Okay?
I think you should move the desks so that it would be easier to put your chair on your desk when it is home time. Its true that I look like I’m not paying attention but I am paying very close attention to you when you are standing in front of the class or anywhere else in the classroom so I do pay attention to you. So I see you are a bit to strict for me but I will get used to it sooner or later so then next year I will think my teacher isnt very strict but teachers are strick and nobody can really stop it exept the teacher of course but it’s most likely that you will stay the same but if you change you will be like a whole new person so I hope you dont change.”
He’s not nearly as talkative now, is he? I love the fact that he is trying to help her at the same time as she is punishing him.
Deb, you’re right, he’s pretty quiet now. But back then he was definitely a yacker. I love the punishment paper because it’s so HIM – good-natured, friendly, opinionated, and a born negotiator. I love how he makes it clear that he’s not going to change for her, and he doesn’t expect her to change for him, so they both might as well just get used to each other. Some people spend a whole lifetime learning that they can’t change other people.