My next strong memory of my earlier years in Oshkosh was my time spend in 2nd grade. At the beginning of the year my teacher was Mrs. Ryan, she was pregnant and later in the year she took maternity leave and a less desirable substitute took her place. Now first grade I remember learning all the cursive alphabet letters and writing and writing every single day, but second grade was a bit more exciting. What i remember most is our reading competition. We had a year long competition to see who could read the most books by the end of the year. Each book we read we would get a paper clip to put on the back wall in a chain hanging from our name. The winner of this contest would get a prize, and I was determined to win. I'm not sure if it was the prize, or the encouragement from my teacher Mrs. Ryan that made me want to be the top reader in class, but by golly I out read every student almost 10 to 1 the first couple months. I played a smart game, reading the shortest books possible and getting my mother to sign off on them. I was way ahead of the rest of the class mid way through the year and my teacher was very proud of me. I'm not sure what happened, but I suddenly lost interest in this endeavor and stop reading books completely. As i suppose you are already guessing from this foreshadowing, I end up losing the competition. It was miraculously only by a slim margin and I could have pulled out the win if I had wanted to, but it just felt right giving it the Ben. I almost felt bad for reading short books in the beginning of the year, mainly because my mother said I couldn't do it anymore, but I still felt like Ben deserved to win due to my playing the system. This was one of those moments where the morals installed by my mother actually played a role in my compassion and desire to be a good person.