Tag: 20th Street School
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My Apocrypha 17: The Big Guns
This had happened before. They had called me in for an emergency once before, but that was in Normal, and this was bigger. Much bigger. There was a time when the city of Bloomington-Normal was broken up into two cities bumped up right next to each other. When my parents worked at Rocky Rococo’s in…
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My Apocrypha 13: Churning Butter in the Hood
Take the students to the farm, they said. It will be fun, they said. Real close to Halloween, 20th Street Elementary School decided their third graders would go to the country. Get those kids out of that polluted city and let them breathe the fresh air of the real Wisconsin. Let those kids see what…
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My Apocrypha 4: Urinate and Defecate
It’s hard for me to explain the effect it has on the house when a child has been molested and the authorities have been called. I’m talking about the effect on the house, not the effect on the person who made the call, or the child who’s been hurt. It’s the rest of the house.…
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Rise of the Storyteller 14: The Darkness of Slinger Middle School Part 1
Marshmallow had actually slapped me and I was doing everything I could not to laugh at him. See, Marshmallow was the scary kid. He was bigger than every other kid, dumber than every other boy, and he was piss ugly to boot. No girl would talk to him. None of them were impressed. He had…
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Rise of the Storyteller 11: Malice
When you see evil as a victim, it becomes less of what it was. Char was a monster to me, but I know his father. I know the kind of life he led and I know about his own abuse. It does not change my hate of him, but it does kinda. It is hard…
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Rise of the Storyteller 10: Liechen’s War Part 2
I went back to 20th Street School years later. After my fear of the place had drifted off and I came to terms with my years there. I looked up from the sidewalk and noticed it looked more like a prison than I had ever seen. The building had a new name printed on it.…
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Rise of the Storyteller 9: Liechen’s War Part 1
I studied with some of the greatest minds in the gifted program at Washington High School in the summer of 1986. They chose the brightest and the most innovative minds to come out of the Milwaukee Public Schools. Mr. Olsen had recommended me for the gifted program and, knowing my parents would not have filled…
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Rise of the Storyteller 8: Savior
Pride had them. I could see by the clock in the gym there was only two more minutes before the first bell that would call all of us to class. And Pride had planted his feet. Pride and I had gotten into a blistering fight one hot spring day when we were both in first…
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Rise of the Storyteller 6: Cloaked in a Mushroom Suit
I was obsessed with black girls. I could stare at them all day, and often did. There was, in my eyes nothing so beautiful, nothing so exotic, and nothing so powerful as a black girl. I told one once that I thought she was pretty. Very sweetly, she thanked me then walked over to a…
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Rise of the Storyteller 4: Matching Blades
I don’t think my second grade teacher, Mrs. Herring, hated children when she started teaching at 20th Street School, but by the time she got to me, I think it was starting to happen. Teaching is a punishing job. You see one kid after the next that you can’t save. Can’t save from bullying, can’t…
Jesse Teller 