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If by now you haven't detected that at age 9 or 10 I was a self-centered, egotistical, little so-and-so, let me fill in the blanks for you. A kid that refuses to do homework and gets away with it is an incorrigible brat. The first thing I learned in seventh grade was that the Sunday afternoon picnic was over. Fight it, run from it, hide? Nope, none of those worked. After 9 weeks I was pretty much failing everything. I - the one that had always been the teacher's pet - was out of my element and perhaps in so deep I would never recover. I hated Northside and darn near everyone in it - teachers, classmates, eigth and ninth graders, bus drivers - all of them. I especially hated the principal, Mr. R.O. Marbert. I was a great con artist and he wasn't having any.

I began to study a little. I also did some homework. Not a lot of homework, but enough to pass a test or two. I always made A's in science classes and history, but let's say math wasn't my cup of tea. Really, who cares which train gets to Chicago first? Like I said I made some pretty good grades, but we won't go into math grades because my children and their children may read this someday.

Along about the beginning of the second semester at Northside things began to get more bearable. I was able to play my trumpet in band class pretty good and the little work I was doing got me out of the doghouse about grades. I never liked the place, but I faked it enough to get by.
One thing that I did discover that was a huge delight was Science Fiction. One day while looking around in the Library I happened to pick up a book written by Robert Anson Heinlein. As I recall the title was "Double Star" and I was soon hooked. I read all the Sci-Fi in the school library and started getting books from the public library. In class, I would open my textbook to the correct page for the lecture and then put my pulp magazine or science fiction novel inside it. As I appeared to be poring over the interesting stuff in the book I went un-noticed for the most part. It was a good trick that I used for years to keep from learning any of that ugly stuff they tried to teach us.