At age five, I wanted to go to school. My father was good friends with the school’s superintendent, and as a favor to my daddy, he let me start first grade a year early.
My father drove me to school every morning. During the first week after he dropped me off, I would run down alleyways and beat him home. My parents couldn’t figure out why I was doing that because I had begged to go to school. I confessed that I didn’t want to be away from my dog Jiggs.
My sympathetic teacher, Miss Versa Butler, decided that my dog could attend school with me, and could sit in a little seat beside me. From then on, I loved school.
I told everyone that Jiggs had learned his ABCs at school, but couldn’t say the alphabet out loud because he hadn’t yet learned to talk.
