My teachers had stopped suggesting remedial course work, and my handwriting had managed to improve on its own, but making money was still very much on my mind, and the older I got, the more money seemed to matter.

Now, as an adult, I look back on that kind of tossed-off assessment and cringe, because I was pretty much like every other kid in this lady’s class. Our interests lay mostly outside the classroom, and we all counted the minutes until the final bell each afternoon.

It was a negative instead of a positive, and these well-meaning people were concerned. The special ed teacher suggested I be tested for a learning disability, because I couldn’t even confine my handwriting to the lines on our ruled notepaper, but it was agreed that the first step would be for me to have my [...]

In the spring of my kindergarten year, my teacher sent home a note asking my mother to make an appointment to discuss my progress. When my mother showed up for the appointment, she was met by my kindergarten teacher, the school psychologist, a special education teacher, and the school principal. My poor mother remembers feeling [...]

The only problem was that once I’d gotten paid for it, I wasn’t all that interested in cooking breakfast for all those ladies unless there was something in it for me. I was too young to understand any larger picture.