School has started and, as if on cue, it's suddenly turned cooler and darker. Such is the way in Rochester. As I watch the kids get on their buses, I start to remember those years -- and the dreams about those years which still plague me (can't find my locker; forgot my combination; am late for school; missed the bus; am sitting in Dr. Thibodeau' s Western Civ class and haven't studied for the test and he KNOWS it).
But instead of dwelling on the common nightmares which chase all of us (you are all intimidated by Thibodeau, you just don't know it), let's stroll down the special, scarring, experiences particular to Miss Gretchen.
I was deeply disappointed in Kindergarten when I realized that my snowflake costume for our little performance of The Nutcracker was not something akin to The Good Witch of the North with sparkles and tulle and a wand, but a sad little men's oxford over white tights and NO SHOES. I never got over it.
In first grade, we had a wall of addition tables. You had to go up and do them in front of your teacher, Mrs. Kukucha, who had a long pointer with a black tip. She would point to each card and you would give her the answer. Working on my 6's addition table, she noticed I was using my fingers because I hadn't studied, she made me sit down. I still hate adding anything to 6.
In second grade, I stumbled in my reading group. I decided to sound out the word, slowly... you try sounding out "the" and see how it works out for you.
In third grade, after deciding that I "needed God," my parents transferred me to Catholic school. Shortly into my long stay there (which ultimately led to the exact opposite of becoming a dedicated Catholic), my teacher gave me a lunchtime detention for digging the top of my eraserless pencil into the wood desk. As if that weren't enough, she felt the need to tell the whole class about it. Instead of getting a rep as a rule-breaking trouble-maker, I think I was seen merely as the freaky new girl with the cowlicks.
Every single dress-down day for the 9 years I was held hostage in blue and white uniforms (this will only mean something to other private school prisoners) was preceded by days and days of angst and stress. This was due in part to the pressure to know how to dress "cool" when you have worn blue and white every dang day of your school life since age 7 and in part to having a mom who (though well-meaning) was a child of Camelot/Kennedy Era and believed that you should always dress up and that jeans were "out." I never looked right, no matter how hard I tried.
Did you know there is such a thing as a cool lunch and a geek lunch? I didn't, but I learned. After realizing I was hauling the latter and powerless to change it.
My mother believed in makeovers. No. My mother believed she could cut hair and yet there was this phenomenon about her being left-handed which, not only enabled her to explain why she needed any seat in the house, (I have to sit on the left side; I'm left-handed; I have to sit on the right side; I'm left-handed; ?), it also explained our haircuts which were, without fail, crooked in the back and yielded frighteningly short bangs due to the fact that she had to cut them shorter and shorter to get them even. Becuase she was left-handed. I remember running downstairs to my father in tears becuase she wanted at me with those scissors. Which was pointless. Every haircut was met with much screaming and then mockery at school. "What is wrong with your hair, Gretchen?" And then I came home and yelled at my mom for ruining my life.
Every year I had two halloween costumes: something I hated that my mom made me wear to school (which was never a princess costume) and then whatever I ended up wearing out to trick or treat (which was a sad, pathetic attempt at a princess costume or a ruined version of what I wore to school). (Seriously, how bad are you feeling for my mom right now?)
When they split us up into a boys' group and a girls' group, we immediately knew they were going to have "the talk" with us. "The Talk" in a Catholic School is pretty useless, as you can imagine. The girls left thinking that our periods were going to spontaneously start one day (probably when we were wearing white) and we would be immediately awash in blood and need to run to the nurse's office to get a maxi pad that had STRAPS. After that, each one of us because paralyzed with fear about when this horrible plight would strike us. The boys refused to tell us what they were taught. Seeing as they were taught it by the 70-year-old priest, I suspect very little.
And those are just the high-points from grammar school....
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