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“Billy passed the third grade. Oh, what a glorious day.

“Oh, passin’ third grade. The Billy Foley way.”

My younger brother started singing that song to me soon after he first saw the 1995 movie “Billy Madison.” The song was originally about Madison, played by Adam Sandler, but my brother substitutes our last name because it took me two tries to pass the third grade.

He introduced the song on to two of my younger cousins, Jeremy and Tye D’Arcy, who find it hilarious that I had to repeat the third grade a couple of decades before they were born.

Oh sure, I think it is funny now. You have probably heard me even joke about it. I graduated from Butte High School in 1993. I would have graduated in 1992, I say, if third grade wasn’t so hard.

In 1983, however, it was not even remotely funny. It stung me for years. I probably did not find any humor in it until I heard my brother alter the Billy Madison song.

For the record, the final report card I received from third grade at the Blaine School in June of 1983 said that I was “promoted” to fourth grade. My mom, on the other hand, decided I would repeat the grade the next school year.

That also happened to be the year the Blaine closed, and all of us former Mustangs had to take a bus across the Butte hill to become Kennedy Crusaders.

Looking back, the move was an obvious one. I should have been held back in second grade. Maybe even the first grade.

It wasn’t that I was dumb. I just really, really hated school. For me, it was like going to prison every day for six and a half hours.

When I started first grade, I had this unexplainable need to be perfect in school. I thought I had to get a score of 100 percent on every paper and every test, and that was stressful.

Eventually, I snapped and stopped caring at all. I can remember the exact time I reached the breaking point, too. It was during a math test in first grade. I got the first five or six problems right, but I could not figure out the next one. I started to panic, and then I started to cry.

My good buddy Brian Lobb was sitting to my right, so I asked him what the answer was. Instead of sharing his answer, though, Brian made an exaggerated shifted in his seat and covered his paper with his left elbow.

After a few minutes of panic, I thought to myself, “Screw it, the answer is 11.”

The answer was not 11, but I didn’t care. I just made up numbers to write down for the rest of the test and turned it in. I did that for the rest of the year. I would beat everybody in the class to finish the time tests. But if I got any problems correct, it was pure luck.

I would just write a bunch of numbers on the paper, turn it in and then take a nap at my desk. I did that until I Mrs. Betty Lester, my teacher the second time around third grade, changed my life.

Mrs. Lester showed me that school did not have to be so serious. You could learn and have fun in her class.

To this day, I count my blessings that I was held back in third grade. If I would have advanced to fourth grade for the 1983-84 school year, I never would have been in her class. I honestly owe everything I am today to Mrs. Lester.

In the summer of 1983, though, there was absolutely nothing good that I could see about being held back. Or, as classmate Bill Grant said a few times, “Ha, ha, Foley flunked.”

Outside of my family, not many people knew I was repeating third grade, and I wanted to keep it that way. I was going to put off that realization until the last possible second.

I did not even tell my good friend Chris Campbell. Chris and I became friends in kindergarten, and we lived close enough together that we could walk to each other’s house in just a few minutes.

We would spend tons of time together in the summer. In the summer of 1983, we must have played 100 baseball games against each other. That was back when kids played one-on-one baseball games, complete with ghost runners and super-short home runs, in their tiny, uneven yards.

I was always the Red Sox, and Chris was the Mariners. Our record was about .500, even though Chris could never hit my fastball. Well, he couldn’t hit it until it started to get dark. Then he could not miss.

After our marathon games, we would usually bug our parents until they agreed to let us have a sleepover in one of our yards. We would stare at the stars, hit golf balls over the tops of the houses down below Chris’ house, and throw stuff at passing cars.

We must have spent thousands of hours together that summer, and I never once told Chris that I was repeating the third grade. I just could not do it.

On the first day of school, I caught the bus going up Main Street where it intersected with Buffalo Street. I sat in a seat by myself until Chris got on at the next stop at O’Neill Street.

I did not say anything. It was as if I was a prisoner being bussed from my trial to spend the rest of my life in a maximum-security prison.

Chris, though, was optimistic. He started talking about how we were going to have a great year in school. He said that, hopefully, we get the same teacher. That way, he said, we could sit next to each other.

He talked like that for blocks as the bus made its way through Walkerville and down to our new school. He kept up his optimistic talk on the playground as we mingled with a bunch of kids we never saw before, waiting for the dreaded bell.

When the bell rang, Cathy Bury, the super-nice playground monitor we all called by her first name, told us where each grade was supposed to line up before making our way into the school.

First grade here. Second grade here. Third grade over there, and fourth grade right there.

Chris looked at me like I had two heads as gingerly made my way to the third-grade line.

“What are you doing?” he said. “We’re in fourth grade.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes and shook my head to say “no.”

Being a grade behind Chris did not really affect our friendship much. We still played a hundred baseball games each summer. We still slept in our yards together. We still bonked cars.

We are still good friends. We still live close to each other. I know that if I ever need something, Chris will be by my side in a heartbeat. He knows that I will do the same for him.

I don’t’ know why I could never tell him that I was being held back over all that time we spent together in the summer of 1983. I knew he was too good of a friend to ever tease me about it.

Most of my worry was unfounded because not many kids teased me. That is probably because of the school change. The kids who did know me were just worried about adjusting to their new school.

Or maybe they felt sorry for me.

That is not the case with Jeremy and Tye, though. Every time I see them; they still start singing that song.

“Billy passed the third grade. Oh, what a glorious day.

“Oh, passin’ third grade. The Billy Foley way.”

 — Bill Foley, who will someday get revenge on Jeremy and Tye, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.