From the desk of Wally Dawkins, Athletic Director:

It was the worst year thus far in my academic life.

Third grade had just been too much for this 9-year-old to bare. Eagleton Elementary in Maryville, Tennessee was the school, and Mrs. Handley was the teacher’s name. And she was aptly named.

Aptly named because Mrs. Handley would put her “hand” on my backside two or three times a week in the form of a spanking.

She hated me.  She had to hate me.

There was no way I deserved a spanking.  I remember one day in line after recess, she just came up to me, grabbed my left arm with her left hand, and then gave me two swift swats, right on the left back pocket of my Sears & Roebuck Toughskin jeans.

The playground dust flew after both fierce blows.  It was like she just, well…enjoyed it.

Although I had been a stellar student at Eagleton Elementary since Kindergarten, I was not happy with my current educational situation, and I informed my dad of my disdain for Mrs. Handley and that I really didn’t want to return to Eagleton for 4^th Grade.

Each day on the way to Eagleton, I would ride my gold sting ray bicycle with the white banana seat and high handle bars, right past the Krispy Kreme Drive-In.  It was an original Krispy Kreme.  It was a drive-in where the waitresses came out to your car to take your order. No electronics. They had a walk-up window with two picnic tables out front where you could buy a burger and fries, maybe a hot dog, but that was pretty much it.  Except for the doughnuts of course.

On Fridays, if I had been good at school all week, my mom would give me 10 cents to spend on the way home.  My common menu selection of choice was two glazed doughnuts and a bottled coke for one thin dime.  Actually it was what I got every Friday when I rode my bike home.  There were no variations in my order.  Just bliss in every sugary sweet bight, washed down with a swig of ice cold Coca-Cola.

It was my favorite day of the week.  My dad would usually take me to a game on Friday night, I looked forward to Bugs Bunny & Roadrunner cartoons on Saturday, and that oh-so-good Krispy Kreme experience on Friday.

Life was good. That is until being good meant all passing grades AND no spankings during the week from Mrs. Handley, who you remember…hated me.  Passionately hated me.

Honestly, I could fudge on the grades a little bit because RenWeb had not been invented yet.

I could not fudge on the spankings however because Mrs. Handley with her “memory like an elephant”, would never forget to call my mom on the night of the purported spanking, thus disqualifying me from the Krispy Kreme visit at week’s end.

I now began to loathe Mrs. Handley as well.  Not only was she physically abusing me with those two or three swats with her extra small hands, she was denying me the basic human right of enjoying Krispy Kreme doughnuts as well.  The spankings plus the denial of Krispy Kreme certainly should have been defined as cruel and unusual punishment.

This scenario of no Krispy Kreme’s due to spankings was reoccurring way too often, so I had to figure out a better way.  I contemplated cutting our phone lines, eliminating Mrs. Handley’s ability to assume the role of informant.  I pondered telling Mrs. Handley it would do no good to call my mom since she had been sent away to a mental hospital.  Since none of those options seemed doable, I made a bold move, and decided to go straight to the source of my problem.  Misses Hands.

I made the decision to try and make a deal with Mrs. “Hands of Stone” to see what we could do about eliminating her physical assault on my backside.

When I posed the question of “what can we do to exclude my mom from receiving spanking updates”, Mrs. Handley asked me a question.

“Walter Ray” she said (Wally is actually a nickname), “Why don’t you stop frogging Dennis, Perry, and James in their arms when we are standing in the lunch line?  Why don’t you stop pulling Lisa Weinstein and Beverly Smitchen’s hair when they are playing on the seesaw, and maybe consider stop spitting in the other kids faces when you have an argument over the two hands below the waist touch football rules at recess?  Not to mention making fun of the way Lester stutters when we practice public speaking? How about trying that?”

I thought about what Mrs. Muhammad Ali said, and too be perfectly honest…it made some sense.

Always willing to give new things a try, I ceased from pulling hair, frogging my classmates in the arm, no more spitting, and…well the Perry thing was a tough one but I stopped making fun of him too.

And guess what?  The spankings stopped (though not completely) and the Krispy Kreme visits occurred with more frequency.

Life…was good again.

And just so you’ll know, when I told my dad how hard third grade had been on me and that I did not want to return he replied

“Well you just need to do the right thing and hope next year will be better”.

Words that I have actually used to live my life by in much more difficult situations than dealing with Mrs. Handley.

And those words are another reason to be “ALL ORANGE…All The Time”!