February 11, 2005
When the idea of college first cropped up, I wasn't exactly gun ho with the notion. This anxiety persisted through High School and reached its peak during my senior year when my father brought me to Carroll College here in Waukesha. It was in the middle of Fall and I had to admit the campus was beautiful but, with every step, I felt the fear of 12 years steeped in agony rise within my chest.At the time of our visit, the campus library was under construction and I distinctly recall the sheets of heavy plastic draped about the shelves of books, lending a musty smell to every corner of this location. Despite the ghastly appearance of fogged sunlight from these plastic tarps and the clumping of saw dust on the ground, I could perfectly picture the days that my father would wander through the endless aisles of treasured books over 40 years ago.
He seemed to fit in to these surroundings. He was (and still is) the 'scholarly type' who retained every ort of information and pursued every form of knowledge possible. He could become immersed for hours in one book without tiring, he could expand on every topic beyond the call of the classroom and he could excel in every subject (besides math) known to man. Learning did not frighten him; learning excited him.
It was exactly the opposite for me. From the beginning I've had problems with school or, shall I say, school has had problems with me.
In Kindegarden, we had all of these quaint, senseless activities designed to cloud the undeveloped, impressionable minds of six year olds. One of these asinine activities included the infamous Pajama Day. I cannot fathom the significance behind the requirement of having your child dress in his or her night clothes during class or how this could possibly relate in any way shape or form to higher education, but we had to do it just the same. And, after all, who would want to be the only child without pajamas, right? Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to be the sore thumb and thus I donned a clean pair of pajamas and hopped onto the bus early one Kindegarden morning.
Unfortunately, it was the day before Pajama Day that I decided to traipse off to class clad in my pink bunny feet jammies.
I was the sore thumb, after all. Utter humilation consumed me as Ms. Anderson, our unmarried, bloated enforcer of doom (i.e. our teacher), insisted that I sit out of the artsy portion of our day. She did not want me to get paint all over my nice, clean, more than likely only pair of pajamas and thus I had to retire, all by myself, to the 'Great Circle,' where the wooden trucks and stuffed alligators resided, for the duration of the day. It's not as though I had actually done anything wrong, but when you banish a kid off into a large circle, within sight of everyone, all of the other reindeers are going to laugh and call you names. And so, on the bus ride home, the other kids picked up where my teacher had left off by singling me out and making a mockery of my ignorant sense of time. I wore the moniker of 'Pajama Girl' and was constantly mocked with, 'what day is today?' and 'Laura, why aren't you wearing your pajamas?' Children are easily amused and always ready to form a hierarchy amongst their peers. Little bastards...
This began my downward spiral.
In third grade, we learned penmanship. I was extremely excited about the art of penmanship and therefore paid extra special attention whenever the teacher would switch on the overhead projector, signifying our next lesson in cursive letters. One particular day, we were in the midst of learning the cursive form of the capitol letter 'D.' Our teacher requested that we participate and offer names beginning with the letter 'D.' Hands were raised and voices were heard to exclaim 'Daryl' and 'Dirk' and 'Dennis,' and thus we all began to eagerly scribble each name after it was first formed by our illustrous mentor. My timid, little hand reached into the air and our teacher acknowledged me by saying,
"Yes, Laura? What is another name that begins with the letter 'D?'"
"Dick," I stated with all the confidence in the world in actually having an answer.
The room filled with a sonorous laughte that filled every hallway of Lakeview Elementary School and most likely spilled out onto the empty playground outside, while I slowly slumped deeper into the recesses of my small desk. 'What was the big deal?' I thought, 'Dick is my father's name.' Despite my tears, coupled with my often misleading nervous laughter, even our teacher thought I was trying to be the class jester. And so I was punished by being dragged out of class, placed in front of the racks of coats and snow soaked boots, to be boldly informed that I had a 'disruptive attitude' and 'a short attention span that required special attention.'
"As of this instant, I am going to put you in the remedial reading class, Laura, where hopefully you will learn to behave in the classroom."
I simply blinked, wondering what I had done wrong. Every day, I was required to spend an hour with a group of different children, an indifferent teacher and learn the art of literature through remedial games that merely taught me the best forms in which to enrage a young student teacher. The kids in this 'special class' were considered slackers and seemed skilled only in their abilities to drink milk through their noses, blurt out funny words like 'weanie' at the most inconvient times and play monotonous word associated games of Candy Land. I was outraged and took the lot of it with as much disdain as my tiny mind could manifest. My friends shunned me and made each 35 minutes bus ride home a tortuous journey that I assumed was not unlike the firey depths that one might experience in Hell.
A year later, I was engaged in a purely bitter angst at the entire idea of simply attending class. My so-called friends had completely abandoned any and all amiable qualities in which we once shared and thus digressed into the tyranical form of arch enemies. One day, after a particularly difficult bout of playground warfare, I decided to write down my feelings of degradation onto a single piece of looseleaf paper. I harbored this piece of paper, which pinpointed two girls in particular, in the deepest, darkest confines of my desk until the day that we were all required to do a thorough cleaning of our work tables. Papers were strewn about the room and covered the floors en masse, trash cans were placed strategically around the room and filled to the brim. With very little in the way of sagacious foresight, the piece of paper upon which I had berated my ex-friends was found on the top pile of trash. The two girls happened across this parchment and were more than eager to bring it to the attention of my teacher, Mrs. Rupnow.
Without a moment's warning, I was gripped forcefully by the arm and swept out of the classroom. The tears had already started falling by the time she opened the door to our unlit gymnasium, which doubled as the lunch room, and I was utterly confused by the manner in which she had approached me. She shoved the letter into my face with an abhorrence unlike any that I had ever seen before. I recognized the fact that she was talking and yelling and demanding answers, yet I could do nothing but vainly attempt to swallow the massive lump within my throat and cry. I saw my own handwriting before me, hostel and loathing, but I could only recall within myself my mother's words.
"Never fight, Laura. If you're angry, write your feelings down or punch a pillow, but never, ever get into a fight. It's not worth it."
Now, I'm not denying the fact that there are good elementary school teachers hanging about, but in my case, yes I am...
*** To be Continued...