Earl's Little Girls (now complete)

[gordy]

Earl's Little Girls
(a true story)


I went to school with Earl. He preferred that everyone call him Shane. I guess because his name was 'Earl'. Not a very popular name,
although to me, neither is Shane. I think maybe Shane was his middle name, but I'm not sure. Earl was one of the kids that everyone picked on. There were always two or three in every class. We had Earl, Mike and Tina.The teasing and cruelties usually fell on Tina but on Spelling Test Day, all three got the mean treatment.

Each week we were given twenty spelling words to memorize and learn with a spelling test every friday. Earl did not excel at spelling. Neither did Mike or Tina for that matter. They would each consistently miss between sixteen and nineteen of the twenty words. For some reason, now that I think back on it, they never seemed to miss all twenty words. That's kind of weird. Anyway, Mike and Tina, along with Earl would make a competition out of the spelling test. Whoever missed the most was declared the winner of the losers.

Mike sat directly in front of me. When it came time to grade our tests each student would pass their test to the person behind them and the person in the last seat would carry his test up to the person in the front. I was always totally shocked by Mike's spelling abilities or lack thereof. Week after week, minus sixteen, minus seventeen, minus nineteen. However the big shocker always came at the end of the month. That was when we had our fifth grade spelling word review test. Not twenty words but fifty! Here they would come, Mike minus 47, Tina minus 44, Earl minus 46! They would even get together and laugh about it. Now that I'm older I understand this is simply how they coped with the humiliation they must have really felt down deep inside, but back then I couldn't comprehend how they could be so stupid.

Every week I got a nineteen or twenty, occasionally I would even get a fifty out of fifty. The only person who ever did better than I did was Janice Chandler (her first name was spelled like janis joplin's sounds but it really rhymed with 'a neice'). She was so smart that she skipped a grade. When we moved up to sixth grade she went to seventh. What's really weird about her story (and I'm not even sure how this fits into Earls story at all) is that she fell down the stairs at the junior high school and hit her head on the radiator at the bottom of the staircase. She went into a coma and a few days later she was dead. That confused me for a long time, I mean, how could someone so smart, smarter than me even, be dead at a school she shouldn't even be in yet. I hadn't actually thought of her in years until I started writing this story. They tore down that school that very same year and I never got to go there. It was only two blocks from my house and I was kind of looking forward to living within such close walking distance of my school. I was also relieved, though, that I didnt have to climb those stairs or look at that radiator.

Anyway, I'm getting off track of Earls story. As I was saying, we all made fun of Earl, even Earl. I remember he was kind of quiet and a loner. And I remember that I looked down on him. As I think back I realize now that I looked down on a lot of kids. It's funny, I was never one to actually pick on other kids, I rarely did it at all if ever, but thinking back, in my mind, I was always putting them down. I couldn't understand how people could be so stupid. I wasn't stupid, so why were they? It took alcohol to make me realize I wasn't so smart after all, but I can't get off on that tangent or I will never get through Earl's story.

I mostly remember everyone picking on Earl in fifth grade. Sixth grade I don't remember it so much. Maybe he moved away, it's hard for me to remember. I don't remember him at all in junior high or high school. But by then I was the kid everyone was making fun of, the strange quiet kid with the funny hair, so maybe because I was always looking down toward the ground and going through the motions of school, maybe I just didn't see him. I truly don't remember seeing him, but he could have been there in his own little corner of shame.

So eventually I graduated and six months later I started working at a tire store. The self proclaimed smart kid who graduated six months early because of good grades was slinging car tires off of a fifty one foot tractor trailor , ten hours a day for a living. I was a very hard worker and within five or so years I was running the whole warehouse. There were four or five guys under me, all of them were drinkers, but for the most part good workers. That didn't stop me from looking down on them though. At this time in my life, alcohol had gotten me by the hand but she didn't have me in a head lock, at least not yet. Alcoholism did many many bad things to me during the nine years or so that I was drinking, but one good thing that it did to me was that it humbled me and brought me down off of my high horse.

Anyway, guess who eventually came to work at the tire company. Yep, my old buddy Earl, he was still going by the name Shane and still kind of quiet and shy. He was a little better worker than speller but not much. I think he missed a lot of work and to tell you the truth, I can't remember if he quit or got fired. The one thing I do remember is the preconcieved view I had formed in my head about Shane. He could have been a good worker. Actually I think the fact that I associated the fifth grade Earl with the adult grown up Earl definitly could have skewed my views on him as a worker. It really bothers me now, that I can't remember what kind of worker he actually was. I only have a memory of what kind of worker I assumed he would be. It makes me think that I still have a lot of work to do concerning my own thought patterns and how I still stereo-type people sometimes, probably most of the time. I do want to do better though, and I hope and pray most every day that my life is projecting that to the people I am around.

Well everything concerning Earl, from fifth grade in 1978, up until that fateful day sometime around the summer of 2002 or maybe fall 2001, was all a set up. I truly believe God set me up to teach me about myself and more importantly about His love. I actually thought this story was about Earl, but the more and more I get into it , I am realizing it really is all about me.

I was coming home from work, sometime around three thirty or four in the afternoon. The tire company was years in my past and so was Earl.
Actually I hadn't heard or even thought of Earl in probably ten years. So he was the furthest thing from my mind when I stopped behind the yellow school bus as the little red stop sign popped up from under the drivers window.

Suddenly there was Earl. Standing on the corner looking up. Just as sudden, out of the bus, hopping and running and smiling, came two of the most beautiful little girls I had ever seen in my entire life. Earl smiled and I wept. I cry every time I think of that smile. I'm crying now as I write this and I can guarantee I am probably crying now if I am reading this. I hope I never stop crying when I think of Earl and his two little girls.

You see they didn't care if Earl could spell. They didn't care. He was everything to them. He didn't have to worry about being called Earl or Shane or stupid or lazy or anything. To them he was just Dad. D-A-D, and anyone can spell that.

I hope and pray today that for everytime that Earl was ridiculed in school he has gotten two hugs from four beautiful perfectly made little arms

I can't think of Earl now without seeing him standing there waiting for those two little girls to come home. It's really the only memory I have of Earl that always stays. All of my other memories of him get blotted out by that one thought picture of him patiently waiting, and smiling.

Earl couldn't spell very well and he probably wasn't a very good worker either but he taught me more in one day than I ever learned in thirteen years of school. He showed me more about life than I had learned in thirty two years. He taught me more than I will ever learn if I live to be a million years old. I don't think I will ever forget, even if I did live to be a million years old, the way I felt when I saw Earl looking up at that bus in anticipation. He knew his kids were coming home.

I think Earl taught me that day how God must feel, how He must be anticipating and smiling, patiently waiting for that day, that moment when we will come home to be with Him. For that one moment I truly knew what God's love really looked like.

God took me to school that day and Earl was my teacher.

Thank you Earl.....

Gordy 2-4-04

[the quiet poet]

Nice write, Gordy.

[Miyu]

this is only part one right? coming great so far...looking forward for more..

miyu

[gordy]

Well, I finally got this all in, it took me three days because the library only allows 45 minutes of access a day. The first day it kicked me off before I got to save and I was halfway done with the story! Anyway I think it was worth the effort and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

[gordy]

miyu? quiet poet? whatdya think now that it's all done? just curious if it ended like you thought it would or if i threw ya a big surprise ending... anyone elses comment will be appreciated too, otherwise i will just shut up now....lol!

[BrightMindDarkHeart]

Gods lil lessons do come in weird lil ways eh? Good job, for you and Earl

[Debbie]

Gordy I enjoyed this poem immensly you sure put this together well...
I know I've posted on it before.. I dont know why it is gone..but I'm replying again because this deserves a comment..
this story had me in tears.. and I felt such love from this story...
great work

[gordy]

thanks deb

[Delivered]

This was GREAT

[gordy]

thanxs dear

[heinzs]

I read it (again) and there are tears in my eyes (again) too...

[bags123]

Great story Gordy. You're a good man, and so apparently is Earl. Life is full of little lessons along the way isn't it.

[Leysa]

Gordy,

This was just great. I got caught up in the story and wanted to know more about everyone you mentioned -- they were all so real to me as the reader.

But the moral of it all, the lovely ending, was simply beautiful. And, yes, I cried.

You write just like people talk -- made it feel like I could hear you spilling this out. Man, you should really be published. Folks would pay for this kind of stuff.

[gordy]

thank you very much

[gordy]