I figure it was near the end of third grade that we moved to Chico. Definitely a change from the big city of San Francisco. It's a town in the northern part of the Sacramento Valley. Don't really remember much about the end of that school year or summer. In fourth grade I started to act out. As I recall we were living with another family that had some older kids. I don't think they were very excited about us staying with them. Always seemed to be some arguing going on. That just seemed to pass on to my days at school. I started to get into fights at school.
By the end of fourth grade we had lived with that family, a motel, out of our car near the river, and a house. It was not stable. While living in the house, our mom left us alone one night. We were awaken later that night by the sheriff and ended up going down to juvenile hall. Apparently our mom was arrested that night for having written some bad checks. We stayed in there for a week or ten days. Actually locked up in a cell every night.
If there was any good that came out of that situation, it was that we ended moving into government subsidized housing. These are actual cinder brick houses, unlike any other houses in the town. So everyone knew you were poor. Food stamps were issued and you felt very much like you stood out from everyone else.
We also changed elementary schools, but nothing changed with my acting out. I ended up getting sent to the principal's office constantly and kicked out of school a few times. I was the school bully and nobody would mess with me. I threw bases at a teacher, hit a teacher with some books in the library, anything I could think of. At some point during sixth grade someone had the idea that I was bored and needed to be challenged more academically. So I got sent for some special instruction to keep me challenged. It seemed to do the job as I settled down quite a bit for the last half of sixth grade.
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