1471 Flunking Football

Thursday, September 13, 2007

On King of the Hill this evening, Peggy Hill gets in trouble with the town for flunking the star football player.

I did that once, with pretty much the same result. It was 1966, G----sburg High School. I flunked the star football player (probably Algebra II).

The coach came tearing into my classroom and angrily told me I couldn't do that. I (all 4'10", 98 lbs, and 21 years of me) stood my ground and informed him I had to, that I had no other choice. He said he'd take it to the principal and the school board.

I got battered from several directions, but I prevailed because I was on firm ground.

I had told the boy he was likely to fail. I had always stayed every day after school for an hour to help anyone who wanted to come in. The kid missed class at least one day every week for practice, but he never came in after school to catch up on what he'd missed. If he hadn't warned the coach, it was because of his own arrogance, figuring that he would be allowed to coast.

Uh uh. No coasting past me. And it wasn't fair to the other kids, who worked for their grades.

My grade stood, the kid didn't play the next quarter, and they stopped having sports practice during school hours.

Unlike King of the Hill's booster club, G----sburg "got" it.
.