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Ramblings by Rose Mary (column archive Mar-Apr 2007)
Please refer back to the
Ramblings by Rose Mary main page for columns published in other issues. Rose Mary can be contacted via e-mail at
rwclarke@mibor.net.
Best Punishment Usually Fits the Crime
There are many ways to handle discipline problems. In the good old days when I was a girl and even when I was a young teacher, they sometimes applied "The Board of Education" to the "Seat of Learning."
Al Brown, a well-liked Knightstown coach and teacher, paddled a boy in front of a math class that I was in. Two friends burst into giggles when Claude Sipes, one of the best teachers I ever had, broke his paddle the third time he whacked a boy. Vicki's second-grade teacher-a beginner-announced that she'd paddle the next child who talked. Guess who! We were not pleased!
The best punishment is one that fits the crime. Here's my personal favorite: Mark had flunked French twice and was going down for the third time. He hated French, but needed it for college. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that fond of me either! He was uncooperative and surly until he began to get the message that he'd never escape from me until he got with the program.
One day I was at the console in the language lab where the students sat in individual, walled booths so that I couldn't see all of them. Mark sat in the first row of booths, which lined up with the door. I didn't hear his voice when I listened in with my headset. Uh-oh! That special sense that teachers develop told me that he was trying to sneak out the open door.
I ran around to the booths. Eek! No Mark. How was I ever going to explain this one to the Principal? Then I saw a chair wiggle. Aha! Hearing my footsteps Mark had crawled under a booth and pulled the chair in after him. When I pulled it out he looked up at me and said, "Electrician, Madam, just checking the wiring!" Humor always did ring my chimes so I didn't send him to the office-but I always made sure that the door was closed after that!
One day his best buddy and he arrived ten minutes late to class. Mark was bent over crutches that were about a foot-and-a-half too short, and his pal was carrying his books. "Qu'est-ce qui vous est arrivé?" (What happened to you?) "Hurt m'leg in gym."
Near the end of the hour, he asked, "Can I leave five minutes early to beat the crowd?" This was standard procedure when a student couldn't walk well. "Mais oui." I responded pleasantly. The other students hunkered down behind their books, snickering. I ran to the door in time to see him throw the crutches over his shoulder and skip merrily down the hall.
The nurse rushed in right after class. "That Mark H -- ran in my office and took off with some crutches. He isn't hurt." "I know," I said. "Let's fix him." The next day I said, to the hilarity of the class, "Mark, the nurse and I are worried about your leg. She wants to see you in her office." The very soul of cooperation, he grinned and started to gather up his books. "No, no! Not now. She wants to see you after school!"
Oh how Marge and I savored this because Mark was a boy who didn't want to be at school a minute longer than necessary.
First she made him cool his heels for half an hour and then fill out a long questionnaire that she'd concocted. We milked this for weeks. "Time for your weekly check-up," I'd say sweetly. Then the Dean of Boys came to see me. "I've got several grudges against Mark, and I want a piece of the action. Send him to me."
"Mark, the Dean of Boys wants to see you." While the class guffawed, Mark laid his head on his desk, figuring that now he was in big-time trouble. Instead, the Dean said, "Your injury has come to my attention. We take the welfare of our students very seriously here at Howe; and we Administrators are extremely concerned about you. Pull up your pants so I can examine your leg. Tch! Tch! Tch! This looks really bad, but I think can cure you so that you'll have no more problems of this type in the future." He took wide, sticky adhesive tape and wrapped it loosely around the boy's very hairy leg from ankle to knee. "Do not remove this tape for one week after which time I personally shall remove it."
A few weeks later I asked Mark, "How's your leg? Do you think you need a checkup?" His buddy spoke up, "Naw-He went to Lourdes and got a miracle, Madame!” I also passed him in French - another miracle.
Education Requires More Than New Buildings
What transpires in classrooms is only the tip of the iceberg. The public doesn't see the effort teachers give to trying to come up with something fresh and creative to make class "interesting" and "fun" -- which seem to be the main things that our society wants these days.
Teachers aren't exempt from doing stupid things just as young people aren't. I did some dumb stuff that I'd just as soon forget! One of our friends who taught for Bill when he was a Social Studies Department Chairman now teaches in Ohio. A fellow teacher and she had planned a Pioneer Day to give students a realistic picture of life before the days of super markets and takeout food. They wanted to do something that the students would never forget, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
They went to a back lot where students decapitated, plucked and cleaned two chickens. The news got out, and the superintendent called: "Please explain this. I've been called by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the media; and you will be called also."
The newspaper carried Sherry's picture with the incorrect caption "CHICKENS KILLED IN CLASSROOM!"
"As if we'd kill them inside," Sherry said. "The only good thing was that all this blew up the last day of school! The thing that makes me feel worse was that it caused trouble for my administrators."
That summer the crew of the Good Ship Lollipop -- as we call the houseboat that we rent -- had a hilarious time, telling chicken jokes and cackling. Every year Sherry's husband gives her a chicken object for Christmas - vases, salt shakers, etc., and her superintendent also sometimes receives chicken gifts.
When the Mayhills and Sarah Ward led the fight to save the old Knightstown Academy building from demolition, it was deemed inadequate for learning. Looking back, I wonder how we learned anything in such an antiquated physical plant where we were taught by strict teachers who adhered to the pedagogical philosophy of "Old Eaglebeak," the dictatorial superintendent.
I started teaching in 1958 at an old school on South Post Road in Marion County. Its teachers' lounge consisted of three rickety chairs next to the coal bin in the boiler room, and our equipment was minimal. The vice-principal was so tough that students who had the misfortune to be in a study hall that he monitored called it "The Morgue."
And yet, in spite of these deprivations, people developed fairly complex reading, writing, and cognitive skills, learned enough math to get by on, and developed an understanding of history, government, and geography. One of my best students became a big New York / Washington attorney after graduating from Columbia University. Others became dentists, physicians, and business owners.
Everything I've learned and achieved during my lifetime was built on the foundation that those old-fashioned teachers instilled in me. I know why they, my colleagues, and I were able to accomplish so much with so little: Even though society didn't pay them well, society did insist that their children respect teachers - at least at school.
There is nothing more exhilarating than "clicking" with students and seeing their minds unfold. On the other hand, there's nothing more depressing than a bad day at school. Here's a story from a guidance counselor who teachers in another part of Indiana: "I'm so sad about this boy who was kicked out of school. He's not a bad kid." The counselor asked him what had happened. "I've been late to school too many times." Why is that?" "My mother and her boyfriend promise to drive me to school, and then they don't. Last night they left in the middle of the night to drive to a gambling boat. My family is going to become homeless as of today."
I called my friend a week later and asked, "What happened with that boy you talked about?" "I'm ashamed to admit this, but I've had no time to talk to him. You know, it's hard. We're short-staffed, and I have 500 (!) students assigned to me."
Today's schools are state-of-the-art palaces. There's a certain high school football stadium in Marion County of which the Indianapolis Colts wouldn't be ashamed. I'm enraged when I pass such monuments to frivolity because they are built on false values. To pay for them may require reductions to an already over-burdened teaching staff.
Henry David Thoreau would call them an improved means to an unimproved end. We lavish treasure on bricks and mortar but neglect the very soul of learning.
Bloodroot's Blooms Remind Writer of Her Roots
"When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin along, along
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin' his old, sweet song. …"
Spring Diary -- Monday: My grandson's generation wouldn't appreciate this song that Al Jolson popularized or another favorite Jolson song, "April Showers." Really! Songs about the weather?
I’m taking a break from education. One can’t think about such serious stuff when Spring – glorious, magical, capricious Spring!-- is visiting – at least for a few giddy, fleeting days. I must take the time to savor her essence because she may be gone tomorrow.
As I watched the unfolding of the dawn, I fancied that I saw Lady Spring dancing across the lawn that was being crisscrossed by robins with their distinctive, bobbing hop. She’d discarded the white ermine robe in which she’d slept through the winter, and her gauzy green nightgown floated behind her on the gentle breeze. Whatever she touched awakened from its winter's sleep.
Tuesday: In the space of one day, between dawn and dusk, the sun’s light warmed plants. Flowers open, and buds unfurl. The leaf of the most southerly fat bud on the magnolia tree was split yesterday morning, and its white blossom was trying to burst out. By evening it had escaped as had another bloom at the top of the tree. Some of the trees and bushes have leaves of that freshest, most tender green that matches Lady Spring's gown.
Naughty grape hyacinths are trying to escape from the flower bed and have marched into the rock path that Bill works so hard to keep free of weeds. Crocuses are blooming, and golden daffodils on the south side of our house where the brick walls absorb and reflect the warmth of the sun bloomed a week ago. I broke off a small stalk of one of the larger hyacinths to take to a friend, and its scent filled my car.
The changing of the light has worked in tandem with the rain. The mallard ducks have returned to the drainage ditch by my office, and a pair was wading in a marshy place in the lawn of the retirement center where my friend lives.
Spring is a time of hope and poignant memories. As soon as I realized that the season was upon us, I started keeping a sharp eye on the flower bed in front of the greenhouse window. Aha! I spied the white flowers of ten tiny bloodroots.
Sixty years ago, Mother dug up a bloodroot that she found in a woods and planted it in her wildflower garden. She could grow anything, and the bloodroot grew to a giant of its kind. Several years later, after marrying my stepfather, she moved it to their New Castle home. Finally, after deciding that Bill was an adequate gardener, she brought it to our Indianapolis home where it flourished underneath a persimmon tree.
Years later, we sold our home, and I got permission to take the bloodroot. However, when the time to close on the house came, it had died down; and I couldn’t find it. After the papers were all signed, I burst into tears and wailed, “Oh, I couldn’t find my mother’s bloodroot. The new owner said, “Don’t worry. Next spring you can get a start.”
Looking back, I realize that the bloodroot was more than a plant: It was an incarnation of my mother. For several years I’d forget about it until its season had past. Then, one day, I impulsively stopped at the old house and was given a start. The little plants are miniscule, compared with their parent. Not to worry. The connection with my mother lives.
Wednesday: A gray day. Lady Spring is pouting.
Thursday: The fruit trees that Bill planted out back are in full bloom.
Saturday: Spring is doing her laundry; it’s pouring! I’ve just had one of the biggest frights of my life. A friend and I were having coffee at the Lazy Daze coffee house in Irvington. She said, “Let’s sit outside under the canopy. It’ll feel like Paris!” We took a table against the building where we wouldn’t get wet.
We were chatting away when there was a blinding flash of light and a loud BANG. The scene all around us lit up so that I felt as if I were in the middle of a fireball. Both of us screamed. The people inside the café came running out. I wondered if there’d been an explosion in the second floor of the building.
Lightning had struck a tree about 20 feet from where we sat. “We’re lucky we weren’t fried!,” I exclaimed. We went on drinking our café latte, figuring that lightning never strikes twice in the same place! Duh! It is not smart to sit outside during a storm!
Sunday: A perfect spring day!
Grandparents' Memories Hold Families' Pasts
Those April showers that come your way
Will bring the flowers that bloom in May. …
– Al Jolson
It’s a small world! Sylvia wrote that she had been given last week’s column by a co-worker. The co-worker is one of my great-nephews! Her note proves that small incidents can trigger big memories. My mention of Jolson’s song “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along” brought back memories of her beloved grandfather, who used to sing it to her and later to her daughters when they were small. I suspect that everyone remembers a song that their parents or grandparents sang to them.
According to Sylvia’s grandfather, who was very interested in nature, robins bob because they’re listening for worms. She went on to say that she has grandchildren now and would like to pass on to them what her grandpa taught her and asked me for advise about how to do that. That’s a tall order that will take another column.
Her note triggered memories of old “Granny,” with whom I spent many companionable hours, drinking weak coffee that was loaded with milk and five teaspoons of sugar, talking about books or listening to her tales of the olden days.
Grandparents are the repositories of a family’s past. They’re the ones who have and take the time to tell the stories. In a sense, as long as someone is left who remembers the stories of bygone days, continues the family’s traditions or cooks the handed-down recipes, a family’s people will live on. These days, the only problem is to find someone who is patient enough to listen because everyone is busy with computers and activities. I think that you have to catch them either when they’re young or on the cusp of middle age when they begin to realize that the family elders are not immortal.
Monday was another glorious day. On Tuesday, Lady Spring watered her gardens with a downpour that caused the heads of the daffodils and hyacinths to bow to the ground. Unwisely, I chose this day to clean my closets and pack away my winter clothing. A lifelong Hoosier, I knew better.
Wednesday: The first days of Spring are as ephemeral as Indian Summer; they’re here today and gone tomorrow. It’s bitterly cold with wind gusts that make me scurry from my car into the store where I buy eggs that are for sale for Easter. Nearby are the Peter Paas kits for dying eggs.
As in Sylvia’s case, a small event triggered big memories. The Peter Paas kits carried me back to Vicki’s childhood. The night before Easter Sunday, I dyed eggs and decorated them with the little do-dads that come in the kit. Then after she found the eggs that we hid, we deviled them for dinner.
Vicki always had a splendid basket with a chocolate rabbit and the usual assortment of jelly beans, robin’s eggs and marshmallow peeps. One year the marshmallow chickens had no eyes, and persnickety Bill used a toothpick dipped in coffee to create them.
Thursday: The flowers are drooping from the cold.
I chuckled at cartoons that Bill’s niece, Kathy, e-mailed. In one of them a chocolate rabbit whose tail has been bitten off says to another, “My butt hurts!” “What?” replies the other bunny whose ears have been eaten.
As little, random happenings are wont to do, the cartoon brought back memories of my family all gathered around our round oak dining table on Easter Sunday so long ago … so long ago.
No one can cook like one’s mom! We heaped our plates with the feast that Mother spent two days preparing. Her Easter menu never varied: ham, chicken and noodles, homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, slaw with vinegar dressing, Mama’s corn pudding that was passed down from my grandmother’s people, relishes, and three kinds of pie.
Invariably, they contrasted this meal to the Depression days, when they went hungry because my father was too proud to go on relief. They always told the rabbit story. When I was about three years old, someone gave me a big chocolate rabbit. My teenaged siblings were starved for sweets and assumed that they would be partaking of that rabbit. Instead, I fell in love with that rabbit, wound a string around its neck and dragged it bumping along behind me wherever I went. It became so grubby that they no longer wanted it.
Easter Sunday: A cold day warmed by the presence of Vicki and the grandboys. I must go put the ham in the oven, make deviled eggs and look up the recipe for Mamas corn pudding. As I cook, I shall remember.
Spring Means a Whole New Wardrobe
Spring Diary: The Tuesday before Easter, my mood was as gray as the sky. I don't believe that the human critter was meant to be happy 24/7, and I certainly wasn't. My discontent was a semi-annual, seasonal event. I rashly decided to switch my winter and lightweight clothing which entails packing sweaters away in boxes and exchanging the contents of my closets.
I knew better than to undertake this vexatious task before Easter, but I was seduced by the balmy temperatures and the beauties of Spring. Just as Hoosiers know that one shouldn't plant a garden before May 15, we shouldn't expect Easter to be balmy. I remember how we girls shivered on many an Easter Sunday when we went to church in short, light-weight white coats and spring dresses back in the days when hats, patent leather shoes and white gloves were de rigeur.
Funny how one remembers the misfortunes and minutiae of one's past: I never had a little white jacket. Also, Mother couldn't find dress shoes to fit my long, narrow feet, and I had to wear Buster Brown Girl Scout shoes to church.
First, just cleaning out the closets was an aggravating process. The great Erma Bombeck wrote about her dismay when she discovered that during the winter hot-blooded clothes hangers had multiplied in her closets and produced tangled chains that were almost impossible to pull apart. Not only were there chains of hangers in my closets, some hangers were stuck up sleeves, caught in pockets or criss-crossed so that when I removed one item, others came with it.
Bill and I each have two closets-one for summer and one for winter clothing. This contributes greatly to the longevity of our marriage just as having our own checking and charge accounts does. Thus, he never sighs that he doesn't have enough closet space, and we never bicker about who forgot to write down a check.
My closets are in two different rooms, so the process leaves two rooms in a mess. Yes, of course it would make more sense to leave the closet alone. However, my in-season closet has a built-in organizer and holds more.
"Oh, that this too, too solid flesh should melt." Shakespeare
Actually, the situation has changed during the years, and therein lies the reason for my seasonal discontent. Over the past five years I've put on weight around the middle that I can't shed, no matter what diet I try. I even deprive myself of pasta-and I'm passionate about pasta-to no avail.
The spare closet not only contains off-season clothing, it has all the business suits, dresses and pants whose zippers I can no longer close or whose elasticized waistbands will stretch no further. It's become so full that I have to cram stuff in it while my everyday closet grows more and more empty.
"Beware of enterprises that require new clothes." Henry David Thoreau from Walden
Did I sense someone thinking, "Why don't you get rid of the clothes you can't
wear and buy new?" A thrifty mother's daughter, I can't bring myself to discard
perfectly good attire and buy new. I can hear Mother moaning, "Oh, the expense,
the expense."
During my semi-annual straightening I do bring myself to send a few items to
charity. I got rid of the suits and dresses with huge shoulder pads that made me
look like a halfback For a while, I managed by running a rubber band through a
waistband's buttonhole and looping it over the button, but that no longer works.
Hope springs eternal, and at the turn of each season I hopefully imagine that my surplus poundage will miraculously melt. Every Spring and Fall, I set deadlines for myself: "I will, I will, I will lose weight-before Christmas, before Easter, before our houseboat trip, before Thanksgiving." Sigh . . . Soon it will be time for that nasty, ultimate moment of truth when I try on swim suits in front of a triple mirror. I'm beginning to think that mirrors should be illegal!
My waistline isn't the only thing that's grown! I also packed away a a dozen perfectly good bras. I was lolloping over the sides of my old bras. During a pre-trip frenzy before a trip to France, the store where I shop didn't have the underwire bras that I'd worn for years. The new ones that I hurriedly bought rode up and pinched me. When I came home I bought other bras of the old style, but soon outgrew them.
Acquiring a bigger bust might seem wonderful, but I'd rather have a smaller belly!
Countless Universes Await 'Real' Readers
Although I try not to live in the past, I’ve been blessed – cursed? – with the ability to remember almost every event of my life and connect past experiences to my present.
Many years ago, I wrote an essay, “Conversations with a Fellow Compulsive,” about the “bookie” talks that I had with my grandmother when I was a girl. Recently, that essay, Granny, a college class in the literature of the ‘60s and ‘70s that I took about 20 years ago and the death of a great writer followed by that of a dear friend come together in my mind.
Granny, my family and I were compulsive readers. “Real” readers, as Granny called them, know what I mean? We need to read, must read, cannot stop reading and will read cereal boxes if nothing else is available. Spouses who don’t understand that reading is like breathing to us become irritated. Fortunately, Bill is tolerant of my habit of having my nose buried in a book.
My mother’s fondest childhood memories were of Granny reading to her and her brothers. Granny never forgot a thing that she had read. After losing her sight, she had to resort to talking books which she said was not as satisfactory as holding a good thick book in her hands.
I’d find her with her head cocked towards the record player as she listened intently while keeping up an energetic commentary: “Damn-it-all-anyway! They know I despise Grace Livingston Hill’s pap! Why can’t they send good stuff like Dickens … Have you read David Copperfield? You haven’t? You get yourself down to the library today. You’re in for a treat; you’ll love the story of Aunt Betsy and the donkeys.” And thus would begin one of our chats.
The first book that I read on my own was the Wonderful Wizard of Oz when I was a second grader. That book started me off on a lifetime of reading just as the Harry Potter books have set fire to the imaginations of a new generation of readers. I had a gooseneck lamp that I stuck under the covers so that my parents wouldn’t know that I was reading way past my bedtime. Sixty years later, I remember how proud I was when I got my very own library number – 1369 – that permitted me to check out books from that holy of holies, the Knightstown Library. When I went there a few years ago, I was amazed (and dismayed) to see how little it had changed.
Readers live in a double realm where we are rarely bored or lonely. There’s the physical world that our bodies inhabit, and an interior, imaginary world peopled by great writers. Granny said, “You know, that Hemingway fellow – have you read For Whom the Bell Tolls? – doesn’t know me and doesn’t care about me as a person, but he has to care about me as a reader. His writing and my reading make our worlds match up.”
Real readers take a deep pleasure from talking books with each other. The leader of a book discussion group that I attend and his wife are kindred spirits. The first time that I met him, I assumed that he was a literature professor because he was so well read. Actually, he’s a businessman. He says, “Some men play golf; I read books.”
I have fond memories of walking along Carey Street with Ed Fort when we were on our way home from school. Ever more slowly we’d stroll, talking away until we reached my house at the corner of Carey and Franklin, where we’d stand for an hour. Even today when we meet, one of the first things that one of us says is, “Read any good books lately?” Other times Phyllis Hamilton – alas, now deceased - and I would stand at the corner of Carey and Jefferson until she turned to go home to the Methodist personage.
The best writers see better than we. The places that they create have as much reality as a wonderful painting. Disheveled, chain-smoking old Granny in her sagging house dress, cotton hose and run-over slippers shuffles along behind me through the landscapes of my internal vision: Conan Doyle’s Baker St.; Faulkner’s Yopnapatapha County with its bizarre inhabitants; the planet of Dune; Agatha Christie’s villages; Zola’s cabarets and coal mines; Dickens’ work houses; Hemingway’s Paris; Shakespeare’s gloomy castles; Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Talented writers breathe life into their imaginary characters. The Santa Claus of Clement Clark Moore’s poem, for example, is more real than the saint upon whom he was based. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Marmee of Little Women and her daughters, Macawber, Father Tim of the Milford chronicles, Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Old Scobie of the Alexandria Quartet, Macbeth and his lady all live within me. As long as other readers and I exist, so will they.
Frodo lives!