I grew up in a family of four.  My older brother, Jim, was five years older than me and led the way in just about everything.  I idolized him just as every little brother should.  In our family, it was always said that Jim got the brains and Pete got the work ethic.  I don’t remember ever thinking much about the “work ethic” part, but I sure wished at the time that I had gotten the “brains” part of the deal.

Jim was a lefty.  That meant, as all you lefties out there know, that when you learn to write longhand, you have to drag your hand across the already written word often in the beginning smearing the ink or even the pencil marks into oblivion.  In order to not do this, you have to lift your hand awkwardly up, losing your controlling leverage.  Consequently many lefties start out as poor hand-writers until they get the hang of it.  My brother, Jim, was just such a monster.

My school district in Kirkwood, Missouri did not go by the usual A, B, C, D, F grading system that most institutions use today.  Instead it was as follows:

S= Superior
E= Excellent
A= Average
P= Poor
U= Unsatisfactory

Why or how I still remember this is beyond me.  Sorta like remembering my first telephone number was “Kirkwood 1084J”.  Another was “Terryhill 31390”.  Those were spoken when the operator came on and said “Operator” – before dial phones.  I guess that oughta date me.

But I digress…

When in the sixth grade, under the tutelage of the feared Miss Cochran, older brother Jim had pulled off the near impossible.  He had, with his big brains, received straight ‘S’s at the end of the year from the toughest teacher at Osage School.  Except for one thing.  He actually didn’t get straight ’S’s because he got an ‘E’ in handwriting – probably a gift from a momentarily generous Miss Cochran who felt sorry for the kid who was so smart but had the dreaded Lefty Disease.  Even in the sixth grade Jim’s handwriting was still unreadable.

But everyone except younger brother, Pete, gave Jim the benefit of the doubt and his straight ‘S’s (except for Handwriting) became the talk of the neighborhood for a season and a high-water mark in our family for what felt like forever.  Every time grades were brought home we were reminded that Jim had received straight ‘S’s in the sixth grade.  (All except for one)

So this became the life objective for younger brother, Pete, not necessarily self-perpetuated, but certainly parent perpetuated.  This became the record to beat for five long years of my life as I waited to try my lesser brains in the sixth grade.

When sixth grade finally did come along, Miss Cochran had been replaced by Mrs. MacDermott who, luckily for me, was my favorite teacher of my entire grade school through college education.  The Jim Link Superior Record of Excellence was, of course, announced to Mrs. MacDermott by Mom at our first parent/teacher meeting – the bar being set.  I had never been much of a student, and I think she wanted it for me more than I wanted it for myself.

I limped through the first half of my sixth grade year with my usual “just enough above average grades to not make Dad too mad and ground me” grades.  But then came the “either do it or die moment” that I had always dreaded.  Final semester – sixth grade.  This was it.  This was the time I had to do it in order to uphold the family expectations.  Here was the one opportunity I had in life to finally beat my brother in something – anything…

I started the semester knowing that I had no chance whatever to accomplish this feat.  I had never even come close to straight ‘E’s, much less straight ‘S’s.  But then dear Mrs. MacDermott took over my life.  Every day and in every way she began to encourage me.  I became the teacher’s pet.  I got to sit up in the special desk at the front of the class.  I was deemed “smart” for the first time in my life.  She would often read my “marvelous papers” out loud to the class as examples of great penmanship – whether they deserved it or not.

I began to actually like all the attention I got for being one of the “smart” ones.  I actually began thinking of myself as “smart”.  Jane MacDermott, simply, by the mere force of her will, convinced me that semester that I could do it – that I had the stuff of champions.

I began to work harder.  I began to think that I actually had a shot at it.  At midterm, my grades were the highest they had ever been – not straight ‘S’s, but within some conceivable distance of Jim’s mark.

The talk around the table every night at dinner involved only one subject for several months – my quest.  Even my brother smugly encouraged me, knowing, of course, that I’d never be able to do it.

I don’t think anybody actually thought I could do it except Mrs. MacDermott.  Mom had a passionate kind of wild hope.  Dad had a detached interest in the process and the neighbors buzzed about it constantly, but really, the objective just seemed to be a little too far fetched for average Pete.

And then along came June; the end of grade school; graduation.  I was the valedictorian of my class and the proud receiver of straight ‘S’s.  In the last two months of the sixth grade I had become convinced by Mrs. MacDermott that I could do it and had done little else – not to please Mom, impress Dad or to beat Jim, but to fulfill the dream of Jane MacDermott whom I dearly loved.

I don’t remember a single thing I learned in the sixth grade.  I don’t remember what we studied, what math level I was at or a single paper I ever wrote.  I only remember that Mrs. MacDermott used to umpire our softball games at lunch and after lunch she would read to us for an hour every day as we sat quietly at our desks. (She allowed us to lay our heads on our folded arms as we listened)  She would read great novels to us like Tale Of Two Cities or The Call Of The Wild.  I fell in love with the sound of her voice and the images of those great stories.  I fell in love with story telling and found my life’s work.

After that year I went back to being a just above average student throughout the rest of my school years.  I never got close to having straight ‘A’s again.  I never needed to.  I knew I could be ‘smart’ when I needed to be and that was enough.

Once in college, when I had already decided to go into show business, I took the most difficult Shakespeare course from the toughest teacher in the English Department.  I challenged myself thinking that if I really wanted to excel in show business, then I ought to be able to conquer William Shakespeare.  I hauled out my sixth grade smarts and work ethic and aced the course proving once again that I could do it when I really wanted it.

This was the real gift of the straight ‘S’s.  The belief in myself.  I thank Jane MacDermott for that.  Upon sixth grade graduation I never saw her or spoke to her again, but she stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you, Jane.  You were a great teacher.  You taught me one of my life’s greatest lessons.  Wherever you are now, know that I am eternally grateful.  Had you not come along in my life, I would surely be a different man today.

But you did.  Many thanks.