November 3, 2009
‘The Awakening’ by Ray Cates (Adolphus)
Our social way of life revolved around our education system. What was called, ‘The Sixteen Year Old Test’, started being given in school at age 12.
At the first of the 7th grade, really the first day they marched all the 7th graders into a big hall called the Chiefland Auditorium.
There were at least a thousand kids in there taking the test. They checked our ID, birth certificate for the longest time at the door. I think they even took each students picture.
The tests were on different color paper. My test was on red, others had blue, green, white and brown. I think it was a way to limit cheating. Maybe they were different tests, but I think not.
With most tests, and I’ve taken lots of them, the teacher in charge reads the test instructions, but on this ALL IMPORTANT test the instructions were written and the test reading was the students responsibility.
I thought the test would be tricky and it was, but the main tricks were in the instructions. We were given the test and a dull pencil.
The first written directive was, ‘Use only the pencil your given.’ We were given 10 minutes to read the instructions. I had an extra pencil in my pocket, but I knew following the rules was probably important.
Another written rule, ‘Mark only in the bubble of the correct answer. Leave no other marks on the paper.’
Leaving no other marks would mean not even signing your name to the paper. Also many of the questions were political as well as tricky.
For example the whole government push was about slavery. The 16-year-old test was one determining who would be a slave and who would be free.
One of the test questions was, “Those who morally hate slavery, are participating in the process of slavery if they take this test? Yes or No?’
I marked yes.
Another tricky question was “There is now life on Mars? Yes or No’
I marked ‘yes’ because there had been colonists on Mars for 400 years. That is life, and before that people visited from Earth and transported all kinds of forms of life to that planet.
Some very well read 7th graders might have read scientific articles about a lack of life before Earth’s spaceship landings, and worried about that question. Looking at every word on tricky questions is vital.
The question was overly simplistic and had to be ‘Yes’. People are life and people live there now.
I answered all the questions in the alloted time of one hour and forty minutes. I used the approved pencil. I kept my marks within the approved, specified lines and I didn’t sign my name to the sheets or whole test.
I learned by taking the test that the test makers wanted to produce more slaves, and made the test rather easy for fairly smart people like me, but made the procedures unusual and people who operated their lives by certain habits, those habit clowns might fail.
Basically a person could know and understand higher math, but fail to draw their lines straight and insist on signing their name on their work, and by that procedure, in the long run, possibly become someones slave.
I wrote about all this in my daily journals at home, but did not tell others my thesis or conclusions.
My official notification was by mail, I not only passed but I made a perfect score on ‘the test’. At first my school picture was printed in the Gainesville Sun Daily with a 75 word article in the Local Section. It started out, ‘Levy County Boy Makes Record Score’. My mother cut out the article and mounted it in a frame to hang on my wall.
I went to Chiefland Seventh Grade Center on the school bus the day after my picture was printed. The amazing thing was that Betty Dempsey, this very pretty girl, that I always knew, moved next to me on the bus. She said, “My father says you are the Kenneth Rickey whose father is Philip and owns the farm next to us?”
I was thinking I should say, ‘I’ve been in your classes since the 1st grade’. But I said, “Yes”.
“Oh my God, my father follows ‘the test’ like others follow ‘them Gators’.
Betty was tall, much taller than me and had natural blond hair, really fine, not heavy hair, and expressive fingers.. She moved her hands when she talked.
“My father says ‘I’m the biggest dunce and you’re the biggest genius and we grew up on adjoining farms, drinking the same water.’”
“I’ve been told,” I said, “that Dempsey’s grow corn and beef, but my father basically has a tree farm and drives to his business Central Pharmacy in Chiefland. There he mixes compounds to cure people.”
“I only made 80 on my test. My father read on-line that you made 1200 which is the highest grade or score.
I have to wear a black patch for making under 200, wear it everywhere, to shame me, that starts tomorrow. I also have to bow to people like you, because your far superior, better than me.
I talk on the phone lots, and none of my friends passed. Bridget Cross made a 375 and dad said about her, ‘She has no chance of ever getting close to 800.”
That’s when she took my hand and put it on her leg, near the knee. I squeezed her leg, she was soft, not athletic.
That one squeeze and she sort of went all over me. It was against bus rules to kiss on the bus and two years before big kids rode our bus and they kissed and even had a sort of sex under blankets. They had oral type sex where girls would go under the blanket. Well I don’t really know, you can’t see thru blankets.
When I got to school that day, after roll call I was sent to see Miss Priscilla. I had never before met with her person to person, but many times in the school large meeting hall she had talked to students about ‘the test’ At our school each year the teachers changed schools, but the students just stayed in the same old classrooms, same old place.
I think Miss Priscilla’s job, year after year was to scare the wits out of kids so they would study like maniacs. She was a very tall woman, big breasts and a big bottom, and she always wore high heels.
I had this friend that couldn’t sleep after talks by Miss Priscilla and I told him, “Really Billy she’s always bragging about how smart she is, so why does she wear high heels? Everyone knows they ruin your feet.”
Up close in her office Miss Priscilla looked much bigger than on the stage. I was very small for being twelve years and seven days old.
“Kenneth Rickey” she said and came around her desk and shook my hand, “highest score on the 12th grade test in the United States! And did you know the 1st test is made to be the hardest?”
“You told us that every year.” I said.
“I’ll bet people are asking you, ‘How did you do it?’”
“Not yet, and you didn’t ask either.”
“Well for me as a counselor this is all very exciting Kenneth. Has your day been exciting so far?
“Yes very much so.”
“So what was exciting for you today at school. I think you just got here?”
“Betty Dempsey kissed and hugged me all the way to school. She’s the best looking girl in the 7th grade!”
“Did she tell you her grade on the test?”
“Eighty and her best friend Bridget Cross, who is 2nd best looking in 7th made 375, so what?”
“Well the chances that either of them will pass is very remote.”
“Being the ‘smartest boy in the world’ as Betty’s father called me has a reward I like. I like pretty girls kissing me.”
“Of course, but Ken I have some very exciting news to tell you. You know every year there is a superior class at Chiefland for boys and girls who pass the 7th grade test. Usually we have 12 to 15 kids, but this year only seven of you passed. The six others are all girls.”
“Well as I said, I don’t mind.”
“One other important thing we just found out about, is that a team of scientists want to study you Richard this whole year.
They are going to make their headquarters in the Crist-Childs Building of Cultural Progress on the University of Florida Campus.
The test is really big now and is printed in over 50 languages. Two hundred and seventy professors and scientists will study you. For letting them look at your life. For letting them study you Richard the University of Florida will get about 250 million credits. Your father will be rewarded with 200,000 credits. Sure beats selling and mixing drugs for old people on social security. You Richard will get to go to the University of Florida free for life and also get 200,000 credits when you reach age 18.”
“What do I get right now?”
“Well I just found out this morning about your father getting 200 thousand. That’s really good when you didn’t have to go to work to earn all that money.”
“But I don’t get it and I might not live to be 18 — no one knows about death, and traffic accidents.”
“Maybe you could write down, and talk to your father about what you two want. Your just 12 now Richard, it will be six years before you’re an adult.”
“They want to study me, but I have to wait till I’m 18 to get my pay?”
“That’s about it.” She said, but I could see she was nervous, like teachers got when you asked a question they couldn’t answer. For years I had practiced public humiliation of teachers like that. Especially when the questions were about a subject that they claimed they knew all about.
Once a teacher named Harold gave me his pocket watch, after school, to try to get kids to stop laughing at him about Richard Nixon. National Geographic Magazine had just unearthed and restored Nixon’s home in California and Harold didn’t know about Nixon. There had been a scores of Presidents in the thousand years since Nixon. But Harold had claimed to know the 20th and 21st Century. I enjoyed having a gold watch.
I said nothing as she explained the whole deal over, like all kids are stupid, or because she was trying to sell a defective product. Mostly she talked all day to kids who had problems. Counselors specialize in ‘loser kids’. She never had me in her private office before but practically lived with children who wet their pants or like Cindy Rhodes saw her father shoot her mother and then shoot the gun off in his own mouth.
“How much money does a teacher make a year at this school?” I asked Miss Priscilla
“That’s not something we tell students.”
“Am I just any student?”
“Of course not, and it’s 3,000 or 4,000 credits per year, depending on experience.”
“Good so how much more do you make as a counselor?”
“A few more thousand.”
“So do you think, since you’re the one they called to talk to me, about the 250 million credit ‘study’, don’t you think they might pay you a special amount, for having great insight into my mind?
“I don’t know but I can hope. I will try to help them.”
“I know that you talk with more disturbed boys than girls here at school and the norm is counselors talk mostly with girls. Do you like boys better than girls?”
“You may be right Richard.”
“Your 35 years old and have never been married. There are young male teachers here every year, but you don’t smile at them, but you smile at me Priscilla.
In my proposal Priscilla I will write that I need you to be with me 24 hours a day over the next 3 years. If you decide to leave your indentured slave status after the term specified you will be paid 40 thousand per year, or you can stay on and I get your 120 thousand.
The cover story Priscilla is that your going to write a book about me and then another book about how to pass the test.
The reality is that some of us are dominate and others are submissive. Real slavery is based on overwhelming force. You dress in male looking suits, but then Priscilla you show off your figure using really high heels. When you give your speeches they are meant to scare and subdue your audiences of children Even the way you pull your hair back and wear it short is to diminate. All your life you have waited for a male who would put you on the bottom and stand on your back.
With me you cannot win. I’m a lot smarter than you are. Can you imagine your picture in the Gainesville Sun, on the front page saying ‘Counselor Attacks Highest Test Scorer – A 12 Year Old Boy’.
So speak up slave or will I have to whip the hide off your backside tonight? What do you have to say?”
“Master can I crawl to the door and lock it? Before you explain any thing you want to order me to do?”
___________________________________________________
To contact the author e-mail rcates2@cox.net or fax Ray Cates at: 1-352-629-1573
For another story called ‘Teeth’ with links to other stories. It is found at: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com
Oceans High School is a school for people who dropped out, or need to finish their high school experience, or home schooled and need to graduate. It is found at: http://oceanshighschool.com
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