Learning Curve

The year I turned eight was an important year for me...a new house, a new school, new friends...a lot for a little kid to take in all at one time, but I stumbled through and managed on my own, as I always did. It was pretty much something I had been doing since my twin brothers Tim and Jim showed up when I was barely ten months old. Just par for the course as the oldest sibling.

But something else happened that year that changed my perspective forever.

Any kid who went to Wilkinson School in the early seventies remembers the meanest teacher there, Mrs. K. I won't spell out her name, but she must surely have been in the running for the most terrifying school teacher in the entire district. I think they gave out an award shaped like a little golden witch hat.

Mrs. K wasn't my teacher that year, thank goodness. Apparently a group of defenseless first graders drew the short straw that year.

But Mrs. K was the lunch monitor one unlucky day that I happened to finish eating early and headed innocently out to the schoolyard for recess, along with two other girls. Shortly after that, and unbeknownst to us, a fight broke out in the corridor outside the lunchroom, and students spilled from the lunchroom to watch the spectacle and egg it on. Mrs. K apparently broke up the fight and sent the combatants on to the principal's office, and then had herself a little screaming match in that corridor, roundly berating the remaining students for encouraging such despicable behavior. She also started taking names, and someone piped up that there were some students missing (like me), and so Mrs. K got it into her head that I and the other two girls had managed to escape her wrath by running out into the schoolyard.

We were rounded up within minutes, and marched up to Mrs. K's empty schoolroom, and she commenced with a vicious scolding the likes of which I had never before been subjected to. The three of us stood silently in front of her desk, frightened and bewildered, not sure why we were in trouble. When we attempted to proclaim our innocence, we were labeled as liars. "Admit it!" she screeched. "Just admit that you ran out cause you didn't want to get in trouble!" But even at eight I felt a stubborn need to cling to my integrity, as well as a naive belief that telling the truth was always the best thing to do. My so-called cohorts in crime must have felt the same way; none of us would admit to something we didn't do.

As punishment, Mrs. K forced the three of us to stand several feet apart with our noses to her blackboard, and she waited patiently as her first graders filed back into the classroom. I noticed the younger siblings of several of my friends glance at us curiously as they took their seats, and I was immediately grateful that none of my own siblings was in that grade. I could only imagine my parents' reaction as word of this mortifying experience spread.

Mrs. K paced the floor in front of her classroom, dramatically waving her wooden pointer about as she loudly described to her wide-eyed six-year-old students the fate that awaited liars and troublemakers, as seen by the three examples standing in front of them.

We were eventually returned to our classroom without incident, but to this day it remains one of the most humiliating things I've ever gone through. In the space of an hour, I did a lot of growing up. I learned that trying your best isn't always enough. I learned that being honest doesn't always help. And I learned that grown-ups sometimes let you down.

Oddly, a few years later, Mrs. K became my own teacher, and I never had another single problem with her. Either she had mellowed after a few years, or fate itself decided to give me a break after that nasty little episode. Life has a way of balancing things.