If You Don't Make the Grade

If You Don’t Make the Grade
(you might get grounded)

Did you ever dread Report Cards when you were a kid?
I did, especially when I was in the fifth grade. I spent so much time being grounded I could have given Howard Hughes hermit lessons.
Every time Report Cards came out I ended up on restriction and just about the time I got off the hook, another one came out. Fifth grade was my lost year and it was all due to my teacher. She had made it her mission to ruin my life and blot out my existence.
And she almost succeeded.
Her name was Pourchate ( pronounced pour-say) Climber. She was forty at the time and weighed around 250 pounds. The best way to describe her would be a bowling ball with arms and legs. Her hair was done up in a beehive and her face looked like a fist. If you have ever seen the expression someone makes after they take a swig of spoiled milk, you have seen Mrs. Climber. What a sweetheart.

It all started the first day of school.
She had everyone stand up, say their name, where they lived, and what their parents did for a living. Now the idea of standing up in front of a bunch of strangers and expounding my family history terrified me but I knew there was no escape, she was running the class.
As each kid got up and spoke I knew my turn was ticking closer. I kept thinking about that scary movie I had seen called the Pit and the Pendulum, and as each kid sat down I felt the blade drop a little bit more.
When they reached the R’s my heart was pounding and my mouth felt like a dusty road. I knew I needed a plan to get through this and decided the best thing would be to pretend I was talking to the portrait of George Washington hanging on the opposite wall. I was hoping that focusing on him would help me ignore the other kids and get the words out before my heart stopped or my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
When my turn finally came I stood up and locked eyes with George.

“My name is John Reagan”, I said, “and I live in Conway Estates. My Father works for Martin Marietta and my mother works for McNamara Tool and Die”.

Relieved that I managed to get it out I started to sit down but old Bowling Ball had other plans.
“Who did you say your mother works for?” she asked in an icy tone.
Still staring at George I said,” McNamara Tool and Die”
“What does your mother do for McNamara Tool and Die?” she asked.
“She is an Executive Secretary for Mr. McNamara” I said as my mouth turned to sand.

Her direct question forced me to break contact with the picture stripping me of the only shield I had between me and the staring eyes of the class. My tongue turned to concrete and I could feel myself sway as if the floor was moving underneath my feet. I wanted to sit down and escape the burning spot light I was under but my interrogator hadn’t finished with me yet.
“How did she get such a fine job?”, she asked.
“ My parents are friends with the McNamara’s”, I mumbled.
“ I see”, she said, “ go ahead and be seated”.

As I sat down it was obvious the added attention hadn’t done much to increase my stature with the other kids. Every few minutes someone would look over in my direction, whisper something to their neighbor, then snicker quietly between themselves. I can not describe the relief I felt when I stepped off the bus that first day. It may have been the worst day of my life but at least I had gotten through it in one piece.
The nightmare was over.
Unfortunately it wasn’t over; it was only beginning. Porch Climber had been looking for a name to put on that ax she’d been grinding and she had finally found it.
Mine.
To be fair, she didn’t exactly ooze honey on the other kids either, but she seemed to take a particular dislike to me that first day and it never got any better. She had made up her mind to make my life miserable and decided to use every tool at her disposal to accomplish that goal. The tools she chose were the Principals Office, the Parent-Teacher Conference, and the dreaded Report Card.

The Office worked pretty well for her the first couple of times, but it didn’t take long for the Principal to realize the problems she was having had little to do with student behavior. After sending me and countless other kids up repeatedly he finally got tired of it and told her she had to control her class instead of making him do it. That was a big relief since the first few visits taught me a Principal is not the kind of guy you want to mess with.

The first time she sent me up was for fighting about two weeks after school started. Well it wasn’t exactly fighting; it was more watching a fight.
A friend of mine got into a tussle with a kid from another class and I happened to be there when it broke out. Old lady Climber spotted it and the fact I was not directly involved made little difference; I got nailed along with the other two.

The Principal of Pershing Elementary at the time was a guy named Darvin Wolfe, but the kids had another name for him.
“Darvin the doo doo”.
Darvin was one of those guys who really loved teaching, especially when it came to educating a young mans rear end with a pine paddle.
But I didn’t know that at the time, I was new to the school and had never been sent to a Principal’s office before. I had no idea what was going to happen but I figured whatever it was, it wouldn’t be that bad.
The other two knew better.

As he stared at us across that monstrous desk it was apparent he wanted to see us sweat before he let us have it. In teaching circles it’s called,” Giving them a good talking to”.
In military circles it’s called, “Psychological Warfare”.

After about fifteen minutes of the “We Ought to be ashamed” and the “What would our Mothers think” lectures he decided to get down to his favorite part.
He put his finger tips together and slowly flexed his hands like he was playing the devils squeezebox. After what seemed like an eternity he finally said, “Well boys, looks like it’s time for me to deal out some punishment”.
Being somewhat of a wit and ignorant of what was coming I shot back,
” If you are going to deal, I want a new deck”.

I learned two important lessons that day. The first was School Principals are not the kind of people who enjoy a good joke when they hear one. The second is there are times when it is better to keep your mouth shut.
That little quip cost me two additional licks.

As I was rubbing my backside on the way back to class I couldn’t stop thinking about Darvin and the situation that had gotten me into his office in the first place. I wasn’t even fighting but just being there was enough to earn me the same punishment as the other two. And my attempt to lighten up what was obviously an uncomfortable situation for everyone had only made it worse.
It was apparent that if School Principals ran the Police Department they would routinely shoot innocent bystanders as a security measure. The other thing I learned was the other kids had been right all along.
That guy really was a doo doo.

The next thing old Porch Climber tried was the Parent-Teacher Conference. That worked pretty well too since she had gotten me cold on a candy beef.
There was a convenience store across from the school and a lot of us would sneak over before class and buy Sweet Tarts and bubble gum and slip them into class. Now I wasn’t the only kid “holding” the day I got caught, but Porch Climber didn’t want them, she wanted me.
It was apparent something this serious needed to be dealt with harshly and since she couldn’t beat me to death, her only recourse was to recruit my mother for the job.
After all, a kid sneaking candy today might do anything tomorrow. He could turn hard and graduate into more serious offenses like writing on his desk or shooting the President.
You just never know.
The day of the conference was not a good day. I was barely off the bus when my mother shoved me back in the car for the trip back to school. She had no idea what I had done but she was sure it had to be really bad to make a teacher haul her in like this.
She asked me a couple times on the way what it was all about but I just played dumb. I kept remembering all those TV shows where the lawyer tells the criminal not to say anything or he might wind up in the electric chair before the next commercial break. As I watched the school looming into view, it was starting to sound like pretty good advice.

As we walked in Mrs. Climber looked up from her desk and motioned us up to the front row. Now watching your mother trying to squeeze into an eleven year olds desk might be funny on most occasions, but it loses a lot of the humor when you are watching your life pass in front of you at the same time.
It was obvious Old Porch breath couldn’t wait to get started; we had barely gotten ourselves seated when she started in.
She spoke with a cool air of disdain and her words were riddled with the same contempt you hear when a judge is passing sentence on a convicted felon. She made it clear she had more regard for a street walking floozy in a tight dress than she did for my mother. As far as she was concerned I was nothing more than a gum toting goon intent on destroying the education and teeth of her other students. And since my mother was raising me, her character could not be much better.

I knew the Grim Reaper was breathing down my neck, but I still couldn’t help admiring the old witch. She was a real artist.
It may have only been a few pieces of Double Bubble in a shirt pocket but she made it sound like I was smuggling Heroin in a hand grenade.
It was a great performance.
And if her goal was to humiliate my mother and turn me into a mushroom she couldn’t have been more successful. That exhibition of hers cost me two months detention.
Luckily for me, it was the last time one of these meetings ever took place.
All Parent-Teacher Conferences were at the end of the day which means it was on the teachers “own time”.
Old Lady Climber had a second job she worked after school and since she couldn’t rub me out and be at work at the same time she had to limit herself. But she still had one tool left and she intended to use it.

The Report Card allowed her to maintain her scorched earth policy while not taking away from her other job. Sort of like those remote control drones the Air Force uses that can blast a guy out of his car while the operator is sitting in an easy chair watching an All in the Family rerun and eating a cheese sandwich.

Back then there were grades for each of the subjects and a separate grade for Conduct. She knew she couldn’t do much with the subject grades since it would have required forgery to have pulled it off, but Conduct was a different ball of wax. Since it was all subjective she had unlimited latitude to embroider on the facts and that’s exactly what she did.
Of course I got an F right off the bat, no big surprise there.
But that wasn’t enough.
She actually kept a running log on me the entire term which she included with a pointed letter to my parents. So every time I got a Report Card I got a long envelope to go with it.

The first time I was handed that “little something extra” I knew I was in trouble. I may have only been eleven but I was smart enough to know that whatever was in that sealed envelope certainly wasn’t going to be good for my health.
I doubted she wanted to tell my parents “what she’d been up to” for the last nine weeks or share her recent fun filled tour of a German Concentration Camp with them.
No, whatever was in there was going to be bad.
So I decided the best way to ensure my own survival and avoid reconstructive surgery on my rear was to ditch the letter. Since none of it had to be signed and returned I figured I could get away with it.
Everyday a bunch of us would wait for the School bus at the far end of the playground by a large oak. When it finally arrived I took the report card and left the letter stuck in a crack in the tree. I was sure no one would ever find it and I would be safe for at least another term, or so I thought.
Do you know what that old witch did?
She must have suspected I would try something like that so after I had left she went out and scouted the area. It didn’t take her long to find it.
She called my Father at work telling him I had left the letter and he could pick it up in the office on his way home.
Needless to say he did.

It had not been a very good day to start with but it was nothing compared to the way the night turned out.
Serious issues need to be dealt with in formal surroundings which in our house happened to be the living room. So naturally this was where my parents chose to read the letter.
I would have preferred the den but they would have no part of it. After all, how can you tell somebody they are going to die with Laverne and Shirley playing in the background?

I was directed to sit on the sofa while they stood over me reading the letter. It was clearly designed to do two things, one to embarrass them and two to make them extremely angry. It accomplished both in spades.

I have never been as scared as I was that night. They were furious and the louder they screamed the more I felt myself shrinking. My ears were ringing and I felt so small I began to wonder if I was going to slip between the sofa cushions. But as bad as the yelling was, the spanking was even worse.
And the three months detention just put the icing on the cake.

Before I got the spanking they read it aloud and it was obvious something was wrong. She included a copy of the log she had been keeping and some of the things she mentioned I remembered. Porch Climber was taking anything she could find and turning it into a major offense.
If I whispered something to another kid, I was disrupting the class. If a kid pushed me in line and I pushed back, I was trying to start a fight. None of it made any sense, she really was trying to get me and I had no idea why.
I tried to get along with her every way I knew how. I even wrote her a note one day telling her I was sorry I made her so mad but that didn’t even work. All she did was look at it in disgust and throw it in the trash can. Nothing helped and all I could do was pray I made it into the sixth grade.

The day the school year ended was the happiest day of my life. I was finally free of Old Porch Climber and her tyranny. Her days of taking pot shots at me were finally over but I was only partially right. She did manage to get one last shot in, and it took her seven years to do it.

By the time I was a senior in high school both me and my parents had forgotten all about Pourchate Climber. They never stopped to think how strange it was that all my behavioral problems suddenly vanished the day I left her class. But I guess they felt the same way I did; it was a terrible year and thank God it’s over.
Let’s forget it and get on with our lives.
Unfortunately, they were going to get one last reminder.

They happened to run into Mrs. Climber one night at the local Jordan Marsh. They were returning something and she happened to be on the counter. It took a couple of minutes but they finally recognized her and made an attempt at being friendly.

“ We remember you”, my Dad smiled,” you taught our son when he was in fifth grade”.
“ Yes”, she said in a nasty tone,” I taught your problem child”.

All that did was make them mad and embarrassed all over again but since I was too big to spank and too old to ground to the house, it stopped there. But I still had to listen to it for the rest of the evening after they got home.

I spent a lot of time wondering why Old Porch Climber hated me so much and I finally got the answer almost twenty years later in my Dental Office.

One day an older lady came in as a new patient. When I had finished and was about to let her go she asked me a question. She wanted to know if I had been in Mrs. Climber’s fifth grade class. Apparently, she had taught at Pershing the same time I was there and was Mrs. Climbers best and only friend. When I told her I had she asked if she could stay a while longer, she wanted to tell me something.

“Pourchate was very hard on you”, she began” and I thought you might want to know why”.
“Yes”, I said,” but hard is an understatement, she made my life a horror show for an entire year”.
“ I know she did and I’m sorry for that”, she said,” I knew she was taking it out on you and your family but she would not listen to me or anyone else”.
“Taking what out on me and my family?”, I asked.
“ What she did had nothing to do with you at all”, she said,” She had an insane hatred for Bill McNamara and she took it out on you and your family”.
“ My mothers old boss?”, I asked, “ why did she hate him. And even if she did, why take it out on us?”
“Because your family were best friends with the McNamara’s”, she said,” and since she could not hurt them, she chose to hurt you”.

What followed was a detailed explanation of Pourchate Climbers tortured mind and what made her that way. Apparently she had married late in life to a man who was shiftless at best and an alcoholic at worst. He worked for Bill McNamara but got fired two years before I had the misfortune of winding up in her class.
Apparently he had showed up drunk one day and was responsible for another man getting hurt. Bill McNamara fired him on the spot and was determined he would never work in a machine shop again.
By this time he and Mrs. Climber had two young sons and him being out of work put a big strain on the family finances. School teachers don’t make much money to begin with and the loss of his income forced her into the job at Jordan Marsh to make ends meet.

He never got another job.
Instead, he sat around the house all day trying to “drink her pretty”. He soon discovered it just wasn’t possible so he took off leaving her with the two boys.
She was convinced Bill McNamara had destroyed her marriage and ruined her life and was determined to get even. When I came along she found a perfect substitute to vent her anger on.
We lived in an affluent neighborhood and my parents were best friends with the McNamara’s. She felt everything my family had would have been hers if Bill McNamara had not fired her husband. And since she could not attack him directly she chose to attack his best friends instead.
Which happened to be my parents.
Unfortunately, all this took place long before my mother worked there so she had no way of making the connection.
Come to find out, Old Lady Climber didn’t care about me one way or the other; it was my parents she was after. She wanted to embarrass and humiliate them for what had been done to her and she used me to do it.
So that is why I spent an entire year under House Arrest. A spiteful old woman wanted to get even with her husbands boss and the only way she could do it was by terrorizing an eleven year old kid.
Like I said at the beginning; she was a real sweetheart.

Now if you are wondering what a fright tale from the fifth grade has to do with selling your house you may be surprised how similar the two can be. If you take the situation I went through and tilt it a little, it can easily look like a real estate transaction after the contract has been signed.
If you are not careful, you may find yourself caught between your own version of an unyielding teacher and a set of angry parents. But it won’t be parents and teachers this time; it will be a set of buyers and a home inspector.
Unfortunately, having a signed contract in your hand doesn’t mean you’ve graduated. All you have really done is gotten past the first day introductions. There is still a long way to go.
You are going to have your own version of a report card to deal with but it won’t come from an unreasonable teacher, it will come from a home inspector. And the same way Old Lady Climber’s report cards kept me stuck in my house, a home inspector’s might keep you stuck in yours. To help you understand this you need to know how things used to be compared to how they are now.

There was a time when selling a house was more a matter of what you could get away with as opposed to doing the right thing. They called it caveat emptor which is Latin for “Let the Buyer Beware”.
Yes, those were the days; you could stick the buyers with anything as long as you got them to the closing table before they discovered what you were up to. You could have tied your crazy brother in law up in a closet and as long as the gag didn’t slip off before the house sold, you were home free.
Not anymore.
The days of abandoning a life long nuisance and sticking the buyers with another mouth to feed are over. We now live in a full disclosure world which means you have to tell the buyers everything. And just in case you happen to forget something, a home inspector will be there to jog your memory.

Years ago life was a lot simpler, you didn’t have to tell the buyers anything and the only inspector you might see was the guy checking for termites. But after years of people being sold “swamp land” in Florida and other such atrocities the public demanded something be done. The state responded by enacting Consumer Protection laws which effectively turned the tables on the sellers leaving the buyers holding all the cards.
By the way, in case you are interested, there weren’t many people who actually bought swamp land in Florida. What they really bought was low lying land which was dry part of the year and underwater during the rainy season. That is why the “Flood Plain “surveys were created and why you hear so much about them in real estate transactions.

Real Estate paranoia is what gave birth to the home inspection business and it has been thriving ever since. It has now reached a point where just about every house under contract gets an inspection prior to closing. And if the report is bad, it can either cost you a pile of money or kill the deal entirely.
And make no mistake; these guys are very good at what they do. I have often said that if Sherlock Holmes were alive today he would probably be a home inspector. If there is a knob that turns or a switch that flips, they will try it. And once they are done flipping switches and turning knobs they will drag the rest of your house through that proverbial fine toothed comb.
Trust me, if it can be seen they will find it.

Then after they do all that they will go back and create their own version of Old Lady Climber’s report card and long white envelope. Only this one goes directly to the buyer so you won’t have the chance to ditch it in a tree like I did.

(Closing Paragraph to be written)