“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink… BUT you can make him wish he did” –Mrs. L.eighton, kindergarten teacher
Day four or thereabouts of my first year ever in a school. Half-pint kindergartner seated over by the windows. It’s flag saluting time. Every morning we all stand up from our seats, stare way up at the flag, place our tiny hands over our hearts and, all together, do something called “Pledging the Allegiance.”
The sun is shining brightly outside through the window this morning. But I’m talking way too bright! It’s somehow “dazzling” the flag again. Hard to explain. I mean, I don’t know if there’s something wrong with my eyes or what. All I can tell you is when I’m staring at the flag with the bright sunlight on it, all the reds and whites and blue are like blurring together! Making my eyes smart. It’s the brightness stinging them, making them water like crazy, and turning the whole flag (and everything else I look around at) into an eye-stinging blur. It hurts like staring right at the sun itself!
So... just like yesterday, I squinch my eyes totally shut and keep’em shut.
But just as the pledging thing is winding down, something snatches my arm and gives it a painful yank! I pop my eyes open and , in the blur, make out this tall, Halloweenish shape next to me. I try to jerk myself away, but no dice! And as my focus returns, I see it’s… Mrs. Leighton!
“MISTER!“
She’s talking like she’s really mad. at somebody. Enunciating every word crystal clear.
“When WE are PLEDGING the ALLEGIANCE to the FLAG, we keep our eyes ON said flag!”
This is all so… I don’t understand. But I say “Only… my eyes. They…”
“…Were NOT ON the flag! Yes, I know!! Nor were they YESTERDAY!”
I’m confused and terrified. I mean, what’s happening? But trying again, even though my voice has practically disappeared down into my stomach, “But… my eyes! I can’t keep them ope…”
“Well, young man, you WILL figure out a way to be keeping them open TOMORROW. WON’T you! Now take your seat!”
“But I…”
“TAKE! SEAT!”
I want to try again but she’s already walking away from me, back to her desk.
So I just sort of crumble back down into mine, swallow my sobs so she won’t hear them. And there’s only one thing going on in my head. I want my Ma! Why did she make me come here!? I just wanna go home!
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Let’s talk about this.
If, when you first saw my title, Penitentiary for Toddlers, you were taken aback, I get that. Pretty abrasive. Too harsh a metaphor. A pretty mean-spirited exaggeration, maybe. Especially in conjoining “penitentiary” with a word as soft as “Toddlers.” Inappropriate. Even unthinkable. Because we are talking kindergarten here, aren’t we. Subprimary. Little people’s school. So yes, it does sound too harsh at first, and maybe you’re asking yourself, What was he thinking when he pulled that one out of his hat?! That’s fair.
Well, I’m the one who, in 1946, commenced living (straight from the maternity ward) as a pathologically shy, sawed-off runt of the litter afraid of his own shadow. Who’d peek out his bedroom window and see only a jungle out there! So. By age five, it had never have even occurred to me that I might someday dare to venture out from behind Mom’s apron strings, let alone spend any amount of time somewhere beyond the family property. I loved my home and family. I was content. I was a house cat. I was all set up for life, right there in the family home. I was never going to leave the safety of the nest. Ever. Simple as that.
But then, KINDERGARTEN dropped out of the sky on me like a ton of bricks! And after Ma dragged me up the sidewalk kicking and screaming, only to abandon me on some fenced-in, prison “playground,” leaving me surrounded by hordes of not-at-all-like-me scarecrow inmates, each a foot taller than me… I felt like Humpty Dumpty pushed off the wall from behind. It was The Apocalypse. I’d been reduced to a sobbing orphan. Me, the mama’s boy, a little drama queen, I admit it. I should’ve been made of sterner stuff. I know that. But… we are what we are.
So. There was nothing good, and everything bad, about Pleasant Street Elementary World. And I was a quivering little stranger in a strange land.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Bathroom rules.
First off, it was “The Basement,” not “the bathroom.” Which made no sense. Because from the way I was brought up, who’d ever want to go to the bathroom down in the cellar? The cat, maybe.
I mean, it would never have occurred to me in a million years that anybody might have a toilet in the cellar. We sure as heck didn’t. And hey, I’d been potty-trained, OK? But because, you know, we had a cellar with a dirt floor, I just assumed everybody did. Which also made me a little redneck, I suppose.
Now, say you needed to go to the bathroom. To start the application process, you must first raise your hand to be eligible for the basement pass. Then when called upon, stand up, after which you’d have to politely ask “May I go to The Basement, please?” But then… even worse than that, you must publicly confess before God, your teacher, and every boy and girl in the classroom whether your particular need was for a “Number One” (to take a leak) or the even more unspeakable “Number Two.”
Now how do you suppose my self-esteem fared after that? I mean… my “business” was my business!
And “going to the basement” at Pleasant Street School meant having to tip-toe all alone down, down, and way down a giant staircase where it was always a little scary dark. Rough stone walls, cave walls really, towered above you as you tiptoed into The Mazes down there. Where with one wrong turn…? Why, you might accidentally stumble into the hot, grumbling room where what looked like a humongous version of the Tin Man’s head was bolted to the floor; and an orange flame flickered behind its vented, furnace eye-slot; with its huge, tubular arms branched out overhead like some big robot spiders’ legs.
Or Who knows? You might even go missing down there.
So anyway, — the Normal Bathroom Days were apparently over. It was to be Potty Training 2.0 from then on.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But I digress. Because the building itself, terrifying though it seemed, wasn’t actually the worst thing about Pleasant Street School, OK? And it wasn’t even that the teachers there were all old ladies (which they were). No. It was just the one particular old lady that I got stuck with. The mean one. The real Old Maid of the deck.
Mrs. Leighton. The one that made me feel sick to my stomach every single day. The one who bogarted my confidence, self-esteem, and ego once and for all under the steel toe of her combat boot.
Why couldn’t I have gotten Miss Doore??? The one that all the kids loved. Because if I’d gotten Miss Doore, I seriously doubt I’d be sitting here today, typing out this dark little memoir. But here I am. And doing exactly that.
Que sera, sera.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You know, I do have to admit that back in 2005 when my first poetry book, Pleasant Street, came out, I took quite a bit of flak about that poem. One local critic, namely His Honor, Judge Kevin Stitham (an eventual ‘frienemy’ of mine) came marching straight into the library where I was working behind the desk, practically shoved the poem right in my face, and demanded to know, “Would you have the guts to read this aloud to our community’s hallowed teacher saint, Miss Doore, face to face if she were alive today (may she rest in peace)???”
The answer was no. Of course not. When I was in kindergarten, I would have died to have Miss Doore.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But before I really get under way, if it please the court, allow me to submit this true anecdote as a testament to my character on my own behalf:
One day, many years after I had first published the poem, I happened to find myself standing knee-deep in a snowed-in parking lot downtown, I was just chewing the fat with a crew of the town’s D. O. T. snow removers. They were on their break. One of them, a rough looking sort sizing me up, said, “You’re that poet guy, ain’tcha.”
Well, didn’t that just make me cringe. Because there I was, the retired high school English teacher and one-time “poet” of sorts (in other words a totally useless guy where this gang of hard working humans who actually earned their livings by the sweat off their backs in the Real World of Hard, Honest Labor might be concerned) being addressed by this blue collar fella you’d peg right away as one of those English-class-hating high school kids with absolutely no use whatsoever for something as stupid as… poetry.
“Uhmmm, I guess. So… why do you ask?”
With a surprisingly friendly, whiskered-face grin, he said “Hell, my wife bought your book. And she pointed out that Pleasant Street School poem to me. And when I started readin’ it… well, didn’t I just start to laughin’! See, I went there too, way back. And I’m tellin’ you boys, man oh man, didn’t this guy here just hit the friggin’ nail right on the head there! Lemme tell you something: that school wasn’t no picnic. Not by a long shot! And this guy here? Oh, he got it right alright!”
My God, I was thinking! Did I have a fan? An actual, working-class fan? You mean, somebody out there in the real world actually read one of my poems? And then… liked it? I was about to cry. I probably blushed. When did things like this ever happen?
But then the strangest, most wonderful, thing! A few others in that work crew joined in, telling their own Pleasant Street School war stories. And there was laughter, some of it grim. But… incredible! We actually had a discussion going on, a poetry discussion, by God! Over something I’d written! I couldn’t believe it. I was in seventh heaven.
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Now ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let’s remind ourselves where on the historic timeline we can place Little Tommy’s kindergarten experience: 1951. Over seven decades ago. In another century. Back in the day when primary school teachers were expected pretty much not to love (or even necessarily like) their students. Because that’s not what they were being paid for. Back in the days when corporal punishment was all the rage, as common as baked beans and brown bread for dinner every stinking Saturday night. When everybody simply knew if you spared the rod, you spoiled the child. And back when if you got disciplined at school, well, the last thing you’d do is run straight home and rat your teacher out, because you knew then you’d be getting it even worse at home. Yes, I’m talking way back when that old song was still popular: “Readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmetic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick.”
So it’s fair to say that all teachers were not so warm and fuzzy as they are now.
But how mean was Mrs. Leighton?
SO mean that one time when the entire student population was about to have a visiting doctor-and-nurse team administer some required inoculation or other into our scrawny little arms, she called me personally to the front of the room. She was always making fun of me for being such a frightened little wimp. So, in this instance, Old Lady Leighton was more than happy to put on a little comedy skit at my expense for the rest of the class. I’d be her ventriloquist dummy
“Well Tommy, we all know how terrified you are of needles…”
Actually a lot of us were as nervous as cows heading to the slaughter house about needles, but I had them beat. I was the Town Crier.
“So you’ll be happy to know…”
( Happy to know WHAT? )
“…that if you want, when it’s our turn to go to the gymnasium, you won’t have to go.”
“What? Really…?”
“I thought you might be more comfortable going with your older brother, Dennis, when his class is called to the gymnasium.”
(moan) “Oh.”
“How does that sound?”
(groan)
“Would that be OK?”
Me thinking and hoping here that if I got to go with Denny, maybe I could just disappear for a bit and go hide in The Basement so they’d just think maybe I ‘d got my shot, and…
“Tommy…?”
“Uhhmmm… yuh… I guess.”
Now, I swear that little noncommital response of mine brought a sudden gleam to her eyes! “OK then! That’s great! Guess what! Your brother’s class is on their way to the gym RIGHT NOW! This very minute!”
I was like, WHAT???
“And that’s the school secretary. Right there in the doorway. She’s here to escort you…”
“Wait! I uhmm… I guess… I changed my mind…”
“Too late.” And she’s already hustling me over toward the doorway where the school secretary is waiting like the prison chaplain, to escort me down Death Row!
“Bye bye,” she chirps, musically.
“No. See, I changed my… hey, I don’ wanna go right now, OK? I wanna go with the class now!”
The secretary’s hand has formed a handcuff on my wrist. And we’re already moving down the hallway.
“But I said I don’ wanna! I don’ wanna go! I don’ wanna!”
In the gym, they could hear me coming, long before I got there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She was SO mean that every once in a while, one of our moms might just, you know, pop into our classroom unannounced on the pretext that they just wanted to catch another little glimpse of our marvelous education in action. Or something like that. I don’t really remember, or know, exactly how they framed it. I was too young, and it was too long ago. And probably it only actually happened three or four times if the truth be known. But I know it did happen. I remember us kids feeling so grateful that we were lucking out, as it put old lady Leighton on her best behavior, even only if it were for an hour or so. And we knew that our temporary classroom mom knew exactly what she was doing: giving us suffering convicts a little moral support.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She was SO mean that seven decades later her name surprisingly popped up in a casual conversation I was having with one Barbara Lockwood, a sweet, retired primary school teacher and current librarian I worked with at the local library. Somehow we’d gotten onto the topic of how school’s had evolved in so many different ways since the medieval Fifties. Always the story teller, I’d launched into a number of my epic Mrs. Leighton memories, and had just finished up with the fact that as a second-grader, I’d learned that old lady Leighton had fallen down some stairs and broken a leg. “And shame on me,” I’d confessed, “but I have to say that the news had, what… put a cheery spring in my step at the thought of it?”
But then I noticed that she was looking at me solemnly for a bit, with a furrowed brow, and I thought, Damn, I’ve said too much. So I quickly tried to cover my tracks with, “Hey, I’m sorry if what I said offended you…” but she cut me off.
“No, Tom, nothing like that at all. Just the opposite. You probably don’t know it, but I worked for a few years under her when she was our principal at that school.”
“Hey. No kidding? No, I didn’t. Know.”
“Well,” she went on, “I’m here to say she was one of the darkest… most mean-spirited women I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I’m saying that she kept all of us teachers terrified. Of being written up. Of losing our jobs. All of us. And oh, she enjoyed keeping all of us walking on eggshells all the time.
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She was SO mean (I’ve saved one of the best one for last here) that the following little incident is the one that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. The one that did me in. I even wrote a second poem about her and this particular episode and dedicated to His Honor, Kevin Stitham, in order to further make my case. And I’ve got to say this: how very therapeutic it was for me to get this memory out of my system and into print…
Let me set the stage. It was another long day in Gertrude Leighton’s classroom. Very pin-drop silent, except for the sounds of joyful activity coming from Miss Doore’s classroom next door. I’d been staring out the window at the shade trees lining the fence for so long, I’d become entranced. In my mind, I was out there sitting free as a bird under one of those maples. Truth, I pretty much was more out there than in the classroom. I was having one of my daily out-of-body experiences, AKA, daydreaming again.“
“Stone walls do not a prison make,” after all.
But someone grinding a pencil in the pencil sharpener snapped me out of my revery. I blinked a couple of times and looked around. Uh-oh! Something was terribly wrong! All of my classmates’ seats were empty! Where in the world was everyone? I didn’t know. But I knew that being left behind was gonna mean trouble for me!
And then I spotted them all lined up over against the far wall in a line that ended in front of Mrs. Leighton’s desk! Holy cow! I had no idea whatsoever why, but I knew I was supposed to be in that line! And I had to get over there! But I knew that if I stood up and made a hasty retreat across the classroom, she’d spot me for sure with her owlish eyes! But what other choice did I have?
So I stood up v e r y s l o w l y. And in my best s l o w m o t i o n, I oozed along the back wall and made it to the rear of the line without detection.
Phew! I was gonna be alright after all. The line was inching forward at spaced intervals. In no time I’d be appearing at her desk. Yessir, there I’d be alright. Just as I was supposed to be. Just like everybody else. Nothing to see here, heh heh. No obvious laws broken.
But thank goodness I’d come to just in time!.
I looked left and saw that a number of kids had already returned to their desks. But… hold on! Wait a second. Every kid now had a piece of white paper lying mysteriously on their desktops. What was the white paper for? I didn’t know anything about any paper! I was pretty sure I felt my sphincter contract.
And meanwhile the line continued its forward movement. Desperately curious, now, I craned myself a foot or so to the left and scouted ahead. And froze! Each of the three kids in front of me were holding a little square little slip of white paper as well! WHY?! What was going on? And where in the world was I going to lay my hands on one of those in a hurry??
And that’s when I knew that I was doomed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here’s a little piece of creative writing that tells the rest of the story…
THE LONG ARM OF LEIGHTON’S LAW
“What we have here… is a failure to communicate…” – Captain, Road Prison 36, Cool Hand Luke
I was no kindergarten Cool Hand Luke, doing my time in Leighton’s lock-down in those pen and inkwell days of 1951… back when you were required by law to publicly proclaim your desperate applications of intent from a pillory of shame: “May I go to the ‘basement’ please? It’s… a… #2.”
Back when the daydreamers, fidgeters, and other felons who hadn’t gotten their minds right yet knew the drill: hands out, palms up, and whack!… the slap of the ruler… I just cried most days—
Like that day, suddenly coming to in a bad Twilight-Zone episode: all the other seats empty…and the rest of the little robots standing obediently in Leighton’s lock-step assembly-line,
My absence there a flaming neon beacon as I, desperate and conspicuously A.W.O.L., was slithering from my assigned seat, and furtively tip-toeing unnoticed to the tail end of said line, breathing the reprieved man’s sigh of relief—
Only to discover (Jeezum Crow!!!) that every last man-Jack-&-Jill was clutching the very something I don’t have, that prescribed, regulation-size scrap of paper egregiously missing from my own little fist! And now… too late!!!
Targeted in the cross-hairs of Doom, the line inching forward, and me a little lumber log strapped to the Conveyor Belt of Death now, edging ever closer to the buzz-saw, to stand alone and vulnerable in Judgement before the all-seeing, all-powerful Gertrude Leighton, manning her own little Saint Peter’s Gate, wielding a tongue-depressor scepter-like, and doling out dollops of white flour paste from her 2 Gallon Mayonnaise JAR OF THE GODS!
She blinks her expressionless lizard blink, sizing me up, and crows prettily, “So Tommy? Not paying attention once again, eh, Well then!” And with the tongue depressor, trowels a big gob of clown-white paste onto my nose!
And dismisses me, sobbing in my shame and humiliation back to my seat with my new, sad-nosed clown face on.
True story. Sad. But true. And there is a final chapter to this one.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
EPILOGUE
“It ain’t over, till it’s over.” –Yogi Berra
Immediately after I’d headed off, all weepy and snot-nosed back toward my desk, Old Bag Leighton (which is how I remember her to this day) probably realized she’d crossed a line she really shouldn’t have crossed. Not on moral grounds, of course. Rather on What-will-his-parents-do-if-they-learn-of-this? grounds. On cover-your-wrinkled-old-butt grounds.
So she came up behind me with some tissues and dabbed the paste and snot from my nose, saying, “There, there ,Tommy,” and patting me on the back. But she didn’t come to apologize. Teachers apologizing to students was unheard of in those days.
But here’s where the story gets twisted. That afternoon when the final bell was sounding, she called me to her desk. Just that in itself scared the crap out of me.
“Tommy, I have a note I want you to give to your mother when you get home.”
Well, didn’t that just freeze me in my tracks right there! I didn’t want Mom to find out anything. I’d end up getting punished for being punished at school. I didn’t need that on top of the pasted nose humiliation trauma. No way!
She showed me the note. It was folded over in half so that I couldn’t see what she’d written. She tucked it unto one of my jacket pockets for me. “Don’t forget now,” she told me. And oh sure, didn’t the big bully-teacher sound all syrupy sweet and nice to me now, huh?
I left the classroom, scampered down the steps, and waited till I reached the sidewalk and was out of sight. Then I stopped and pulled the note from my jacket. As I said, it was folded in half, but it wasn’t taped or stapled shut or anything. So I mean, she must’ve known I was gonna open it and read it, right? So I did, I opened it.
But oh sure! Wouldn’t you know it! It was written in cursive! I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that code. So what to do?
I walked on slowly for a bit, feeling sick to my stomach. Thinking the only thing I could do was throw the note away. There was a ditch running right along beside the sidewalk, so that had to be it. My only hope. Throw it in the ditch. And I was lucky because a lot of the leaves had fallen off the trees. The ditch was filled with them. I was just afraid, though, that if I simply tossed it into the ditch, the wind might blow it right out back out onto the sidewalk. So I’d better bury it deep…
And that’s when I spied the big culvert running under one of my neighbors’ driveways. Thank you, God. I crawled half way into that leaf-filled culvert and buried the darn thing. Then I backed out, stood up, brushed the leaves off me, and went back to walking home.
And two houses down, there it was. Home. Waiting for me. And looking a whole lot more welcoming than it would have with that note in my pocket, I can tell you that!
A couple minutes later I was sitting comfortably at the kitchen table and guzzling a glass of milk, when the kitchen door swung open. And there was my big brother Dennis, also home from school. And what did he do? He opened his yap to make a public announcement. “Hey! Look what I saw Tommy hiding in the ditch up the sidewalk,” he crowed. And yup, there was THE NOTE crumpled in his hand!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I still have that note by the way. Mom kept it and, thinking I’d cherish it as cute in my later years, kept it in an album for me to enjoy. And I’m going to share it here, and then I’ll make my feelings clearly known.
“Some of the boys were asked to stay a few minutes in this room because of too much noise in the boy’s room. Tommy went out regardless and I asked him to stay a few minutes! Consequently tears. (I’m sorry too!!)”
My overall feeling is that the note is not cute. No. In fact my feeling is it’s a deceptive little, bald-faced, black lie, typical of some of the teacher-bullying running rampant in the 1950s primary schools. In this case, one perpetrated on a vulnerable little five year old and his parents.
And why do I say it’s a lie? Because… where in the note is there any reference to the Snowball of Paste I had to wear my on my nose during my perp-walk back to my desk? And the reference to “too much noise in the boys’ room (note the correct use of the apostrophe here, unlike “boy’s” in her note) is laughable! When did she ever patrol the boys’ room? Never. Because the boys’ room was too far down in the maze of The Basement for her fat ankles to waddle there, and because whenever we went to the boy’s room, she was always tickled pink to be rid of us.
So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury here I stand, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I’m testifying that I had only one, single problem that day with Gertude (what a fitting name!), and that the boys’ room was not involved in it in any way whatsoever. And allow me to add… the smug, creative, unmitigated, crocodile gall of her, to end her note to my mom with the sappy and syrupy salutation, “I’m sorry too!!”? Oh, that’s just too much. I mean, come on! Two exclamation marks even? Really?
I’m here to tell you that Just seeing the note here really galls me all over again.
I must remind myself: “The past is a bucket of ashes.” Carl Sandburg told me that.
Let it go, little Tommy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So in closing, suffice it to say that, yes, the public primary schools in the 1950s were pretty hard scrabble on little tykes like me. Gertrude was the worst, but there were others waiting in the wings for us as we’d graduate our way forward through junior high (“middle school”) and beyond.
Take 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Goff who once “took me and shook me.” Why? Because when she warned me to stop “socializing during class” or she would “take me and shake me,” I unfortunately giggled. I swear I didn’t mean to, or even want to. But it just struck me as unexpectedly funny that she’d rhymed. I mean come on, there she was, glaring at me through her goggled Coke bottle glasses, and ridiculously warning me with what? A cute, frickin’ little poem for crying out loud. I just couldn’t help it!
However, the extra punishment I got for that misunderstanding didn’t strike me as funny at all. She gave me after school detention. And before it was over, she left me alone in the classroom, telling me I was not to leave until she released me. And then guess what… she just never came back. I was left all alone in that room for hours. If it hadn’t been for the custodian who came in to sweep the floor, I probably would’ve still been right there in my assigned seat the next day! True story.
Or take Miss Buck. She was always picking on this one kid, Jerry Clukey. She’d singled him out for whatever reason. Well, bullies don’ need no steenkin’ reasons, do they. It had gone on for a long time. What she’d do is harshly yank on a fistful of Jerry’s hair. And it was driving him crazy. Of course he didn’t feel he could safely tell his parents because, as was common then, the parents would likely think he was exaggerating and that it was happening because of some of his seriously bad behavior. So finally, he went home and practically shaved his head. And the day he returned to class, all she did is just smile an ominous, cold smile at him. But on the very next day, surprise! She’d brought in a pair of tweezers from home. Just for Jerry. True story.
Or take the infamous 3rd grade teacher, Miss Wilson. When she’d catch you talking out of turn, you were made to stand at attention, military style, up front facing the class. Then she’d order you to stick your tongue out. It was pretty obvious how much she cherished your crying and choking after she’d unloaded a heaping spoonful of hot pepper powder on it and commanded, “Now swallow.” True story.
You want to know something sad? Well, I think it’s pretty darn sad that I had to wait until 5th grade to finally get a warm, kind, and loving teacher. Miss O’Brien. A teacher who’d allegedly tried to make it as a nun but had failed at it. Very likely because her disposition was so sweet and too Christian. As far as looks go, she was, as people used to say, as homely as a mud fence, but she suffered all of us children gladly. She treasured us, took an interest in us, shared stories of her childhood with us, and made us so involved in our own educations that we all started succeeding.
Truth? I had a big crush on her. And got all A’s that year. Thanks to her, I finally and honestly began to feel I was gonna be alright. I’ll always remember her for reading us Stuart Little by E.B. White.
You know what? I like to imagine Miss O’Brien as basking in heaven. Also, I like to imagine Mrs. Leighton is burning in hell. (Ain’t I awful?) Sorry. But if I ever end up going to hell, Mrs. Leighton had better make herself scarce! I’ll be coming for her.
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So in closing, yeah, we certainly did have it rough at times, trekking our way through the Dover-Foxcroft primary and junior high school systems in the 1950’s. But here’s a thought. At least we didn’t have to go through the Catholic school systems! The Catholic school abuses were infamously much, much worse. Their war stories put ours to shame. Thank the heavens I wasn’t brought up a Catholic.
But if you were brought up Cathlolic… dude, I feel your pain.
But yeah, it always turns out there’s always someone a lot worse off than you.
So it goes…
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