His next school was Rowe. I think it was a middle school. Sometimes he liked it there but it was always difficult. He was with a lot of older pushy kids and most of them were constantly fighting to get attention any way they could.
Some were perfectly normal but others were not nice at all.
First I need to tell you some other things about Tommy's school life.
When he was in kindergarten and first grade he had teachers who loved kids and liked him. He got in second and the teacher told them all she didn't like little boys. I think that was kind of strange but she sure didn't like Tommy, no matter how good he did in school.
It was only a year but it was a long year. That was the year he got interested in computers. They did have at that time two or three apple computers in the hall way that kids could use if they knew what they were doing.
Tommy got books from the public library and learned how to do programs on the computer. For his science project he won an award for making the computer do simple little shows. All a kid or a visitor had to do was push what ever button started the program and watch what happened on the screen.
I think that teacher really hated it when he won that award.
He was already being bothered by allergies to chemicals they cleaned the school with at night. It was starting to get to him. He missed days because I thought he had a cold but the doctor said it wasn't a cold it was an allergy. To find out exactly what it was would take a lot of time and money.
The next grade was a good one. I don't remember the teacher but I do remember the science project. That was the year he built the scale model of the sewage treatment plant and explained how it worked. He won the fifty dollar savings bond for that. I think it was mostly because he said the magic words.
He did all the work, he visited the plant for a tour and researched it and planned it all out but the thing they liked most was that he told how when we had the ice storm and the power was off all over for days, we could still flush our toilets and still had running water. This was because the solids in the sewer water were turned into methane gas and the methane gas powered the plant when the electric was off.
The following year he'd only been there a short while when he got sick again. I took him out in disgust and home schooled him for the rest of that year. We didn't have any books or assignments handed to us. Anything we did we did on our own. I think they were hoping we would fail.
Before the next school year started he was tested. The guy doing the testing was the school psychologist. He was amazed. He said not only did Tommy's knowledge of any subject they threw at him surpass the class he would be going in but that he could easily get into college with what he knew.
However, they would not advance him anymore than the one year he had missed. Their reasoning was that he was not socially ready to be advanced even one year.
So now he went to Rowe. I'm not sure if it was here or before this that he was accepted into a program called "Future Problem Solvers". You had to have a real high IQ to get into this. I think it was much earlier when he was still in the smaller grades because I remember him going from the first school over to the high school, one night a week after school for these get together.
I don't call them meetings because it was more than that. All of these kids got together in one big room. They were all ages not just Tommy's age. They had a ITV hook up so they could interact with the same groups in other schools through the television. He loved it.
* I just read something he wrote about back then and actually, there were two groups for smart kids. The one with ITV thing was for kids with high math skills.
It was just another thing, though that made him stand out.
At Rowe it was soooo much worse. The chemicals were so bad here. I thought because it was a different school it would be different. In one way it was worse. I remember taking him in late one morning. I tried to get into the office but the fumes were so awful I finally had to get someone to tell them we were out there.
It wasn't just chemicals from cleaning now. It was perfume. It seemed like not only did all those teachers but the teenagers themselves wanted to spray cologne all over them selves first thing in the morning.
He was sneezing and coughing and his eyes were streaming. They told me to take him home till he was well but I told them he was well, it was just the chemicals. I had to get an excuse from the doctor before they would let him back in school.
He did have teachers he liked who thought he was a good kid.
He went to a school dance there but it wasn't a dressy affair. I don't know if he danced or not. We took pictures before we left there to come to NY and that's where these photos came from but first there was a very thing that happened.
I always blamed myself for this because Rowe school was over by Diane's and I would sometimes, make that a lot of the times spend the day with her and then we'd walk over to the school to meet the kids.
Sometimes I'd just walk over there and get him and we'd do something after school. I knew those times were coming when he would be embarrassed to have his mom around. What I didn't know is that those times were already there.
This particular day I was late getting there. There was a long bridge that went over the gorge where the rail road tracks and the creek went under it. I heard him yelling as I approached it.
Some big kid was trying to grab his back pack off of him to throw over the bridge. He was a big enough kid that he could have thrown Tommy along with it. Tommy was darting into traffic to get away from him. Cars were honking horns and everybody was yelling.
Actually, Tommy wrote about it better than me so maybe I'll stick his words in here but on the next page.