Friday, May 20, 2016

Nota bene



She wandered over to my desk and whispered, "You. You were the only one."

Writing is hard. I think I just gave away my whole story. In just the first line. I'm supposed to have set the stage, put the story in perspective, and stuff like that. But I do have a grabber (I hope) first line. She really said that.

To be quick about it: the year was 1961. I was in the 7th grade and the woman speaking those words was my English teacher. She was very old-fashioned in an era that was bringing change to the culture even in a backward Indiana town. She wore straight long skirts, a pin-tucked blouse, a light cardigan, and always pearls. She had a difficult time with what is now called "classroom management". The room was generally in chaos. I remember the names of many of my classmates,  particularly the older sister of my brother's girlfriend, whom I helped as much as I could, even letting her copy my homework, because I was fond of my brother and helping his girlfriend's sister helped him. Ok, that's boring, but it did work. They had a long relationship and are still friends.

She didn't fascinate me like Mr. Farkas did with his challenge to draw a triangle with 2 right angles. I spent hours on that one, but was limited by imagination. It can be done.

She wasn't flamboyant, like our music teacher, aka "Daddio Diaphragm", who started class each week by having one of the biggest boys in the class come and punch him in the gut, to demonstrate the strength of the diaphragm. He'd show the kid where to punch, the kid would hit him as hard as he could (and some of those boys hated him).  Daddio would then carry on as if nothing had happened, running us through exercises to strengthen our diaphragms.

Our English teacher did none of those attention getting things. She read to us, or assigned reading to us, and sat at her desk while kids threw spit balls and paper airplanes and practiced saying "goddam" under their breath. That was a very bad word in Indiana in the early 60's. By the end of the decade, many of the boys were in Vietnam, I suppose, learning other words and throwing other things.

I didn't care as long as I could be left alone. I was fond of her, and felt sorry for her impotence in the face of the snickers and hoots as she explained the homework, written on the board in her elegant handwriting, always headed by "N.B.", short for the Latin (she told us) Nota Bene, or note well. "Not a booger", the kids said. So maybe I wasn't surprised the day she came into class, about 10 in the morning, weaving more than a little, talking nonsense, drawing clumsy squiggles on the board. The teacher from next door came by presently, and told her to go to the office. I think; I don't remember exactly how she came to leave. Of course we never saw her again, and no explanation was given.

But on her way out, she stopped by my desk and leaned over. And whispered to me.

9 comments:

  1. Benni, so lovely to read your writing again and what a beautiful post. I think your teacher would be so proud to read this, to know that someone listened to her. I loved this and it reminded me of some of my favourite teachers.

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    1. So glad you liked it!! I was blessed to have very good teachers and I tried to listen to them. (Blogger doubled your comment so I deleted the duplicate.)

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  3. Teaching is such a hard profession and unfortunately some people go into it with the belief that everyone wants to learn as much as they did. Often that is not the case and classroom mayhem can prevail. We had a chemistry teacher a bit like that. Lessons were interesting to say the least but fortunately no one was every seriously hurt and we didn't manage to burn the lab down either!

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    1. It is my belief that she was drunk that day. Odd to think that she was younger then than I am now. It all got to her, I think, one way or another. It was very sad. I hope some of her colleagues were able to help her. I pray she had some sort of pension. There was no Medicare back then in the US. I wish I knew what happened to her. Teaching is, indeed, a hard profession.

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  4. Hi Benni! You have no idea how much I have liked to read this post and see you are back on here. I sincerely hope I'll read you again, soon.... Thanks!

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  5. She could have had heart problems, or had a vestibular event, or maybe you did smell something that lead your thinking to wonder if it was alcohol. But she gave you the 'bug' by knowing that you are the one. Sweet memory. Thank you. Benni, you make my eyes water! You are so good.

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  6. Can't believe I just found this! Excellent as usual. I do love you so!

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