Travel to U.S.: West: A Boy's San Francisco: 1: Photo 8

Around the corner from the boy's house was the school where he went to kindergarten and first and second grades. It was not a happy experience. On the first day of kindergarten, his mother received a call from the principal, who demanded that she come in. The boy, the principal told her, had cried and cried after his mother left. Finally, when it seemed that the teacher would not let him leave, he told her that he would cut her heart out. Off to the principal. The boy's mother explained that it was a figure of speech that the boy heard while playing with his father. Heaven knows what would happen to a boy who said something like that to a teacher in the Year of Our Lord 2010. In the late 1940s, the principal let it pass. Still, the school was a frightening place, because older boys, if they had a chance, would pants younger ones. Yes, "pants" was a verb, meaning "to forcibly remove a victim's pants." There was a deep aura of humiliation surrounding this act, and the boy stayed clear of the danger spots. Now, 60 years later, the whole damned building is gone, the three-story brick heap replaced by this educational warehouse.

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Back to U.S.: West: A Boy's San Francisco: 1 chapter

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