Frankenmuth has both public schools and a parochial school. At the time, most residents of Frankenmuth belonged to the Lutheran Church, and the church had a nice K-8 school. My parents being Methodists, I went to the public schools along with the Catholics. The grade school, K-4, was named after Lorenz C. List. I had thought Mr. List was an educator or administrator. It turns out he worked at Frankenmuth Bank and Trust for over 50 years. Perhaps he just gave the district a boatload of cash. Not only was he a banker, he was still alive when I began school. He died in the early eighties, well into his nineties.
The kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Marcy, thought I should wait a year before enrolling. Having a birthday in August, I have one of those tweener birthdays and had only just turned five years old. To my mother's credit, she insisted. After all, I could already read. I became one of Mrs. Marcy's favorite students. I was one of Mrs. Webb's favorite students as well. I would not say I was a teacher's pet exactly; I just loved to learn. Teachers eat that shit up.
Starting school early meant I was younger than most my friends throughout school. I was also a very small kid. I felt like a sidekick to my bigger friends.
We played this game in the schoolyard and in the endzone of the high school football games that I guess is now called Schmeero. We used a less PC name for it, Smear the Queer, though not one of us knew what a queer was. To us it was just the guy carrying the football trying not to be tackled by everyone else. My friend Jared glossed me with the nickname Rice Springs. Jared was a Cowboys fan like I was a Bears fan. The Cowboys had a safety Ron Springs, and playing Schmeero, I popped right back up after being tackled. To this day, Jared, one of the few friends from school I still keep in touch with, refers to me as Springs.
It was a bit of a transition time at elementary schools. We had monkey bars, that steel slide that would burn your legs and butt on sunny days, and these cement tunnels we could go and hide in. Not to mention playing Schmeero on school grounds.