Getting Kicked Out of School
Home / Back to Bizarre Ideation From Dr. Deke's Childhood

When I was in nursery school (preschool), people in my family (I think that it was either my mom or my grandmother, or maybe both) used to jokingly tell me to, "Try not to get kicked out of school today, ok?" This was meant jokingly, since I almost never got into any trouble at all when I was that age.

Unfortunately, I tended to misinterpret things when I was little. And I usually interpreted them in the scariest way possible, as in this case.

At some point, while some adults were watching TV, I had seen the scene in Beverly Hills Cop in which Eddie Murphy gets picked up by the collar and physically drop-kicked out onto the sidewalk through the window of an office building. My nursery school took place in a church with a large stained glass window above the front doors, which were also made of glass. So, I took the expression, "getting kicked out of school" to mean that the (rather sweet and mild-mannered) nursery school teacher was going to pick the me up by my collar, carry me to the top of the stairs at the entrance of the church, and drop-kick me down the stairs so that I would build up speed before crashing out onto the sidewalk through the window.

This imagery, when combined with the fact that the next thing that happens after Eddie Murphy gets "kicked out" is that he gets hauled off to jail by a couple of cops, really put the "fear of God" in me about getting "kicked out of school." So instead of thinking of it as a harmless, funny little joke, whenever I heard about getting kicked out of school, I knew that I needed to redouble my efforts to be good so that it wouldn't happen to me.