Robert Moore May Have Had less

 This has stayed with me for decades, and I wasn't sure why until now. Robert Moore was a soft, chubby, bespectacled kid in my third-grade class, who started to cry one day. He was a fat kid by 1960's standards, which wasn't very. Our teacher, Miss Kozak, was an awful person. Matronly, you would think she had it together as a teacher, given her age and experience, but you would be wrong. She ate yogurt all day in class while us kids weren't even allowed to chew gum. Worse, she'd blow her nose and stuff her snot rags up her sleeve for later use. She was a Nazi. Decades later on my town's Facebook sites, dozens of former students would agree with me. So, it wasn't just me. 

She asked Robert why he was crying. Sobbing, he reluctantly confessed that that morning there hadn't been any milk for his cereal that morning. 

THAT was it?! I think most of the class thought the same thing. What a loser!

Frau Kozak went in for the kill because that's what Nazi bitches do. She had done it to me as the new kid from Ohio in her class. I don't recall her verbiage after all these decades, but I was already learning the bully tactics she was using, from television. A bully challenges somebody weaker and then barrages them with their circular logic where nothing the victim says can't be turned around and used against them.  Classic Western stuff of the day. She had done it to me, probably my first week as the new kid. I don't recall crying in class, but I probably did. I know I broke down in the principal's office. That woman- Clarabell Henson- was one of the sweetest persons ever on earth. I'm certain she was aware of Frau Kozak's tactics and didn't approve. I think she also knew that I didn't actually want to drop out of school and go back to Ohio. That was a determination by Frau Kozak. 

I don't recall if Robert Moore was sent to Miss Henson's office. I hope he was though. The bully continued to mock and berate him in her quest for his tears. She won. 

Was it a one-off though that there was no milk in the Moore house that day? I think us kids thought that and figured Robert was soft and overreacting. I think that incident stayed with me all these years because as I went on in life and learned more about myself and life, I learned more about how life might have been for others in our town in those days. Several years ago, on Facebook an older sister of a gal who was a classmate noted that she had thought we had lived in "the hood" when we were younger. She had returned for a visit and marveled how nice all the homes were in 'our hood'. And the prices! She was right. Improvements had been made. It was no longer a working-class town of big, affordable houses. The buy-in was for the wealthy now. I just at the time had thought everybody was in the same middle-class boat. I wasn't wrong to think that in my young mind. All our dads worked and most moms didn't. They raised us and kept house. There was food insecurity in the Ferrerman household, but the seven of us kids are in agreement today (though two have passed) that this was because our mom dreaded going to the grocery store. There was one car and dad used it at work. And he worked a lot. You would too if you had 7 kids. There's that need, plus the need to get out of that houseful of kids!

It may well have been that the Robert Moore house was on hard times, that there was no milk in the house because there was no money for it. That might have been true for many classmates as well. I didn't know then. The sixties were (to me) a wonderful time to be a kid. Life was relatively affordable to a kid like me with several paper routes, but that came later as I grew. I don't know what became of Robert. We never hung out and I couldn't tell you when he even left school. I don't mind using his name here because there must be a million Robert Moore's between here a Glasgow. I just know we shared tears and a bully- albeit separately- and we fumbled our way out of childhood. I hope he did well and that he endeavored to assure his children and grandchildren always had milk for their cereal. We live in a country now where not so many people care about other people's children. Maybe they never did?