8th grade

You’d think that after my poor performance in 7th grade mathematics, I could go back to learning at the snail pace that I was used to. But no – urged on by my father, I went on to take accelerated math classes at Michigan State. I took geometry, trigonometry, and algebra I and II, with a semester devoted to each. I learned nothing in these classes and continued to do poorly. My dad was a constant resource in helping me with homework. I was definitely one of the poorest students in the class in terms of understanding the material and yet I never got anything less than a B-. After a while, the new assignments were simply beyond my comprehension, since I didn’t understand the previous material which they were based on.

Nothing noteworthy happened during 8th grade in terms of education. Nevertheless, excitement found me. One day, I was home alone and I heard the sound of dishes breaking in the apartment next to ours. At first, I ignored the sound; after all, dishes do break accidentally. However, it soon became abundantly clear that the person in that apartment was breaking every single thing he could get his hands on and screaming at the top of his lungs. I became slightly more worried. In the next ten minutes, the sounds didn’t stop, although my parents did come home and were just as concerned as I was. Suddenly, a completely naked black man ran out of the apartment with a broom handle, and proceeded to run down the row of apartments, hitting all of the windows he could reach (he cracked ours). I called 911 and my dad got a hammer in case he needed to defend us against the crazy naked black guy. An Asian couple was unfortunate enough to come home right after the crazy guy ran out of his apartment; he saw them, ran over, and started hitting their car and the woman with his broom handle. The Asian man started wrestling with him and my dad ran out to help him. They managed to pin the guy and by that time the police had arrived. However, the crazy black guy would not shut up. He kept screaming about how he was set up for prostitution and when it became clear to him that the police weren’t letting him go, he started singing the Star Spangled Banner – cut off when the paramedics game him a sedative. In a strange coincidence, we moved to a different apartment soon afterwards.