Jerry and Ginny invited me to their spacious apartment for my first Thanksgiving away from family. They were new college graduates and newly married, gregarious and generous. Ginny, who taught fourth grade, was the person who encouraged me to join a gym with her and also to be her co-worker in the church nursery, a job I agreed to only if she would handle diaper changes. Jerry taught math and coached football and basketball as well, I think. Ginny was on her first solo flight cooking her first turkey, in those perilous days before You Tube might teach her how to do so. But she did beautifully. I don’t remember what I took to augment the meal, but it would have been something basic. I also don’t clearly remember who else was invited, but there were other teachers around the table. Later, we watched television and played board games. I later learned not to play with Jerry, who took even Monopoly seriously and was a sore loser. I was so troubled by his attitude about winning that I stopped playing board games altogether, even if he wasn’t there. The holidays were oddly out of sync for me, because the city and its mall decorated for Christmas in familiar ways, but the sun continued to shine. There were no leaves changing colors and falling; there was no snow.
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[ Miracles abounded in the spring, which btw, was evident because the flowering trees on the island separating traffic on 36th Street bloomed. Pink. For a week. Then we were back to summer weather. But the students were spring-restless, just as I had been in Ohio during the spring. [photo source: © BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons.] I was doubly so, knowing I had a job and a new life waiting for me in Ohio. The drawback was telling people I wouldn’t be back next year, which was hard for many of us. Three of the high school teachers left that year, as did the principal; that was hard for the students. I didn’t have a plan for getting myself and my stuff—no longer able to fit it all into the back seat of my car—to Ohio. But God is the God of surprises, so my college roommate called and asked to come for a visit. We’d kept in loose touch, though I hadn’t seen her since we’d graduated. I was to have been a bridesmaid in her early fall wedding that year, but I canceled after I took the job in Florida, even though I already had the dress and shoes. I knew she had a young son, but she agreed to fly down for a few days and help drive the U-Haul to Ohio. Alicia had already left for her summer job at the camp where her parents worked, but Jennie (who had found another place to live after Hurricane David came through) came over the night before I left. My roomie was going out with a friend from high school who lived in the area, so I was especially glad for Jennie’s company. I loved that house, and it was hard to leave, though the small U-Haul was packed. Finally, we were on the road early the next morning, putting miles between myself and a place where I’d done some serious growing up, leaving behind people and places I loved. Photo by Zulu Fernando on Unsplash Most of the time, I liked teaching. Just teaching, not writing behaviorally stated objectives or lesson plans, and certainly not grading. I was always the last of the secondary teachers to finish my grades every nine weeks. Grading and averaging grades was all done by hand, and homeroom teachers entered the grades of their students from each of the other teachers. They couldn’t leave until that was done. They hated me on those afternoons. It was all the other stuff around teaching that weighed me down. In addition to junior class fundraisers that required my presence at, say, Saturday car washes, there were school-wide fundraising efforts, such as candy sales or magazine subscription sales. All of these needed to be carefully tracked; it felt like a subsidiary of grading papers. The worst extracurricular, however, was the annual Carnival. Held on a Saturday in February, it was not related to any spiritual practice. We didn't observe Lent. There was a bounce house on the lawn and many games. The junior class was responsible for a food truck; along with the students, I learned how to hook up canisters of soft drinks, and I grilled hot dogs. But for high school students, the undisputed ruling passion of Carnival was the dunk tank. Students paid for many tickets to have a chance to send their principal or a teacher into a tank of cold water. It was one of those things I did for the good of the whole body, though I did not enjoy being dunked. My father died on a Thursday morning. Preacher was wonderful; he called Inga, who handled all travel arrangements for the church and school, and got me a flight to Ohio that afternoon. (Funny what one remembers in a crisis; I’ve never forgotten her name was Inga, whom I never met.) One of the secretaries insisted on driving me to the airport. My roommate was horrified. I was just numb, my way of coping when overwhelmed. Much later, when I could joke about it, I told people it was my Dad’s final gift to me. He died the week of Carnival, the only time I was excused. As a new teacher, I did not get in trouble nearly often enough. A few times I could have--and possibly should have--been fired. I was in my twenties; that’s my excuse. But I did sometimes have the chance to chat with the principal--more often than I had doe when I was in high school. I have a habit of writing notes on my hand. This has never bothered me, but it became a problem when some of the students picked up that habit. Some of their parents were livid. I was called to the principal’s office and told not to make notes on my hand. It’s hard to break a habit; now retired, I’ve gone back to it. The second reason I was called to speak to the principal was over the matter of my sarcasm, the use of which hurt the poor students’ feelings. Again, parents were outraged and called the school, but not me. This soft-heartedness of the students was surprising to me, because my youth group was based on teasing and sarcasm, and my family could also tongue-lash ”all in fun.” As a young person, I heard a lot of “don’t be so thin-skinned,” and so developed a thicker hide. This was not, apparently, an option that was going to be implemented at the school where I was teaching. I toned down my clever quips. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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