On the bulletin board, in the third grade classroom of my favorite teacher of all time, Mrs. Dorothy Marlin, were a collection of nursery rhymes; my favorite being the one about the infamous, “Ten O’clock Scholar”. The rhyme read as follows:

A diller, a dollar,
A ten o’clock scholar,
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o’clock,
And now you come at noon.

Many were the afternoons, full and drowsy from lunch, that I sat at my desk, elbow resting on the desk top and my head resting on my hand. I sat there staring at the bulletin board, but more specifically, focused on that “scholarly” rhyme.

At first glance, it seemed almost entirely nonsensical. It raised more questions than it answered, for instance, the rhyme mentioned a “diller”.

What the heck was a “diller”? And what did that dollar have to do with “the…