Kindergarten

Johnny Miller had a tough time of it, there, in kindergarten. He was the baby of the family - the youngest of several kids. And he got picked on, sometimes, but as the youngest, learned to fight back, too.

In Armadillo Creek, back then, the schools were small. The teachers were great, but the facilities were old. Kindergarten sat across the street from the rest of the school, within view of the elementary and the high school, in a house with its own fenced in yard.

Being a small town, all the kids rode the same set of school buses, kindergarten all the way up to twelfth grade, and Johnny's was no exception. So, each day he'd load up into Bus Number 3. He lived far from town, and was often the first aboard the bus, and the last off. The ride was about an hour, altogether. And, being a youngster, he endured some good-natured, and some mean, teasing.

The favorite seemed to be, from his teenage brothers and their friends, "What's your name?" and he'd answer, "Johnny Millo"... they'd say, "No, what's your full name?" and he'd answer, "Johnny Awful Millo" and they'd roar with laughter. It never grew old...

Johnny Arthur Miller was born in the early 1970s. He started Kindergarten in August of 1976... by the middle of the school year, he was loving school - although he'd come home and his Daddy would good naturedly ask him, "Did you ask any girls for sugars today?", to which he'd inevitably answer, "No". But, he did know what sugars were... "kisses"... Boy, was he terrified of girls!

One day, he steeled himself and faced the bitter truth. There was only one way to get beyond this "sugars" thing. He walked up to the cute girl that lived a couple of miles away and rode the same bus into town. The girl whose older brother joined his in teasing him. They were on the playground, near the teeter-totter. He screwed up his courage, and blurted out, "GeeGee, can I have some salt?"

He got slugged. Now... sugar and salt look the same, don't they? He never did quite find out for sure if she knew what it was that he was asking for or not - although he heard rumors, from his uncle, years later, that she still remembered the incident. As for him, he was totally mortified, and more terrified than ever before about girls.

And so he sank into the welcome world of school books. His Big Chief writing tablet would get plenty of workouts in the months and years ahead.

And, his Dad quit teasing him about 'sugars'... Eventually, as his speech improved, the teasing about "Awful" stopped, too. And so the school life of Johnny Miller began.