Jimmy Was No Good At School

Jimmy was called names, discouraged, disparaged, The only people who pretended to like him were my mother, And Miss Kneeland, our first grade teacher. Jimmy loved my sister and me. He was three times as tall, as tall as the sixth graders, and he was in second grade, but he had flunked twice …. At least. Kids made fun of him. Called him horrible stuff. My sister and I threw rocks at them and yelled at them. But we were small, little. Loved by Jimmy. One day Jimmy stopped coming to school. It was too hard for him. The next thing we knew he was in big trouble with a neighbor man for taking his tractor apart. That “retard” took my tractor apart! The rumors were going around hard and fast. The man was so mad at the retard, our friend Jimmy. Until he discovered that the tractor, which had been a lemon from the get-go, was finally running smoothly. Then, to the man's credit, he told everybody in town Jimmy the “retarded” boy is a “genius.” My sister and my mother and Miss Kneeland and I already knew that.