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crotchrotwedgy

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            Todd James De Mint, a man very much like myself.  Around six feet tall, with a face full of coarse sun reddened brown hair.  Always around 200lbs, not fit, but not really fat either.  He has bluish grey eyes, just like I do, with a face that, when in shape is quite chiseled, and when out of shape, a little pudgy.  With a beard we look a lot older, but when shaved we have a face that looks half of our true age.  On his left forearm he has a tattoo of a scorpion, and higher up he has the USMC insignia from when he was a Marine.  He is a very compulsive man.  Never liking to throw out anything, he wears his worn out boots with duck tape wrapped around them, right below the laces, where your foot creates a crease from over flexing while walking.  He has a pair of work pants that had a little bleach spot on them from the wash.  He in turn splattered bleach over the entire pair of navy blue Dickies®, and wore them almost religiously to work, and everywhere else for that matter.

            My father liked to read to me, my brother and my sister when we were kids.  From what I can remember, the books that he would read to us were always interesting, to me at least, but they were almost all on topics that were hard to understand for a kid, i.e. the Hobbit.  I also remember that the way he went about it was more forcibly than voluntarily.  My father would sit us down and read in a semi monotone voice, so we never really became attached to the story, on top of the fact that we didn’t really understand the totality of what the characters were going through.  I don’t recall him ever really giving us a choice as to what book we wanted him to read.  We would have to sit there and enjoy what we were listening to or he would become frustrated.

            My dad is pretty messed up.  He was six years old when his father shot himself in the head for whatever reason that was never discussed.  As a result of having to be the only man in the house from an early age, and never forgiving his father for leaving him alone, he became an abusive alcoholic.  He would get off of work around seven in the morning and just go straight to the bar.  Around noon he would come home and pass out until he needed something to eat or we would wake him up by being too loud, which had a tendency of turning violent.

            I read so much of Pinocchio that day.  After reading, I forgot to put the book away, and left the book on the floor of the basement and went about other things, hoping to get back into later on.  When my dad woke up and went into the basement, he saw the book on the floor and must have seen it as disrespectful, almost to the point of treason.  He grabbed the book and ripped it apart, leaving it lying in pieces all over the floor for me to deal with.  I found it later that day and didn’t know how to react.  I felt crushed and conflicted, because all I was trying to do was please him.  He didn’t even look at the fact that I had been reading such a big book in the first place, just that it was in his way; seemingly out of place in the organized chaos of the home.  I remember trying to piece the book back together to finish it, but I can’t remember if I ever did.

            That day must have affected my confidence in school reading assignments.  In school, I was always a slow reader.  When the teachers would make us read in class, I would start to read the assigned article.  Then when I noticed that other kids were finishing and raising their heads, I would just stop reading so that the whole class wouldn’t be waiting on me, and notice how slow I read.  When I read out loud, I did alright.  I may have stuttered a bit out of nervousness, but it came out clear.  I have always done well on the tests, but homework and certain class assignments never went well for me.

            I never felt that I belonged in school.  I understood almost everything that I encountered, but my drive just wasn’t there.  At home my parents were always too busy doing their own things.  In school, the faculty would constantly punish me for acting out.  I don’t remember any teachers in the public school system standing out as someone who truly wanted to see me succeed.  I think of teachers just giving their daily lesson and only having concern for those that followed the school’s cliché student image.  This constant discouragement from my family and school led me to being expelled three times in the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grades.  When I was expelled in the 7^th grade I was sent to an alternative school.

            The Middle School Academy in Racine, WI actually had teachers that interacted with their students, and spoke to us on our own level.  I adapted positively to this change.  I aced all of my classes, and felt the urge to please my teachers.  I was allowed back into the Racine Unified School District in the 8^th grade only to be expelled and sent back to the Middle School Academy, again.  Once again I progressed in this environment.  In the 9^th grade, my mother got me into Walden III.  This school was part of the RUSD system, but ran alternatively than the standard school.  Walden III gave me the freedom I needed, but the encouragement from the teachers wasn’t there.  I wound up being expelled again, but this time it was permanent.

            I found after being out of school for a few months, that staying home wasn’t the life I was searching for either.  I wanted to learn but now there was absolutely no one there to teach me.  I started hanging out with a friend that was being home schooled, and I asked his mother if I could take some of the classes with them.  His mother gave me the course material, but I was never actually enrolled in any classes.

After a few months of this I learned that an older lady that has been fighting RUSD for most of her later life, wanted to fight to have me allowed back into a normal school setting.  I only saw her at the meeting where the decision was made, but it gave me the support I was looking for just knowing that someone that I don’t even know was willing to fight for me.  She won that battle, and I was allowed to attend the Keith R. Mack Achievement Center in Racine, WI. 

This was another alternative school, because RUSD saw me as unfit to attend a normal high school.  This school was once again, exactly what I needed.  I seemed to fit in, in alternative schools.  In addition to the ease of relating to the faculty, the Mack Center didn’t have standard semesters; instead it had packets that we were allowed to work through on our own pace.  I flew through my classes.  In the year and a half that I was there I completed everything that the school had to offer me, and I was forced to leave because they had nothing else to offer me.

            I was enrolled in Gateway Technical College in Racine, WI under Act 39, which was a grant to help high school students’ graduate.  Unfortunately this was the structured lifestyle that I had been rebelling against my whole life.  I did stay there to graduate, but I never participated in group work, and always acted out against the teachers.  Thinking back I am surprised that I was not expelled from this school as well.  It wasn’t only the “my level” environment of the alternative schools that help me to stick it through.  It was the fact that I knew there were teachers out there that actually wanted to make a difference in the lives these “reject” students, and give them the encouragement to succeed.

My dad definitely played a huge role in shaping my current reading abilities.  Even though I have come to like reading on my own, his actions in the past have slowed my course to where I am now.