My First Grade Teacher was a Genius!

I don’t even remember my first grade teacher’s name but I do remember that she was brilliant!  I had not gone to Kindergarten, as there was no Kindergarten class where we had lived.  Looking back, I believe I didn’t go because my mom couldn’t let me go.  However, that’s OK.  I had Miss Francis, Zorro, and Lucille Ball to teach me about life.

Anyway, when I got to first grade I was absolutely thrilled.  School was so great.  There were books, other kids, art supplies, and a water fountain!  I read my report card from first grade the other day.  The teacher comments went from “Karen is really enjoying school and participates in all subject areas” to “Karen needs to talk less” and finally to “I am wondering if Karen wants to go to second grade.”  I must have driven her nuts!  However, half way through the year she discovered my great imagination and put my non-stop talking to good use.  I was put in charge of a daily puppet show for the Kindergarten classes.  I played all the parts, wrote the script, and performed my original stories with glee.  I didn’t really write a script, I did what I now know is “improvisation.”  I let the kids’ reactions dictate where the story went.  I was a future storyteller in the making!

School then became a joy for both of us.  I looked forward to school every day.  Every part of it was an adventure.  I did not, however, look forward to lunchtime.  The food they served in the lunchroom was a little too adventurous for me.  I was the quintessential picky eater.  I found a way around this by leaving school, walking home and making myself a couple of pieces of molasses bread with white Wonder Bread and King Syrup. 

I did this every day until one day my mom came home unexpectedly from work and found me standing on the counter reaching for the can of King Syrup. She asked me why I was at home.  “I don’t know” had, as I said, become unacceptable so I said I had come home to get my jump rope.  As soon as I said it, I realized the flaw in this story; we did not keep jump ropes in the food cabinet with the King Syrup.  

She sat me down and asked me to explain.  I told her I did not like the food in the lunchroom so I came home every day.  She asked me what I had done with the quarter she had given me every day for lunch.  I told her I gave it to someone else each day before I left.  So, she marched me back to school and paid in advance for my lunches and ordered me to never leave school again and for goodness sake at least try the food.  It turned out that some of the food was pretty good, but some of it was really gross.  Remember, “Spiced apple rings?”  Apples formed into perfectly round segments with a hole in the middle that were dyed bright red.  I don’t think anyone ever ate them.  All of them are probably still intact in a landfill somewhere. 

I made it through first grade and did move on to second grade due to the efforts of that great teacher.  However, with second grade came a move to a different town.  Just when I had the whole school thing figured out everything changed.  But that’s what makes life exciting and teaches us the things we need to learn.  :-)