Nobody asked me how badly I would feel if we moved two months into the school year.
Nobody asked. And we moved. And there I was, crunched over the arithmetic book in the new fifth grade class that had been plopped into.I didn’t know anybody in this school, which was several hundred miles away from where I had been comfortably ensconced in a different fifth grade classroom. I didn’t know anybody and it didn’t seem like anybody wanted to know me.
There I was hunched over the math problems the teacher had assigned us to do in class. And I didn’t have a clue how to do them. Long division. It might as well have been Greek.
In my own class, back in Pennsylvania, I would have been sitting at my desk, knowing that I had in my desk a gavel. Yes. I had been elected president of my class (as it happens the only time I ever won any kind of election) and had the honor of using the gavel whenever we had classroom meetings.
Here in this tiny village in New York State I was nobody. Back in my old school, I was popular (I thought). I had won an award in the science fair the previous year and had been understudy to the lead role in the district-wide operetta. I was taking violin lessons, and had recently started on trumpet as well.
But there in my uncomfortable desk in that town in New York state, I was nobody. Or worse than nobody, because my father had come to start a church in a storefront on the edge of town. No one wanted another church, especially a conservative Baptist church. No one wanted me there. Except maybe God.
Now this was a new experience for me. I was smart. I picked up things easily. I was a very good student. But I didn’t know how to do long division. The seconds, minutes were ticking by. I had to do something.
So I made that agonizing creep up to the teacher’s desk, tears pooling in my eyes.
“We didn’t get to this yet at my old school,” I whispered to her. Agony.
By the end of class, I knew how to do long division. It took a long time till I really felt at home in that town, however. If I ever did.
I enjoyed your story, It's always fun and an adventure to read about other people. This is how we learn. Everyone has a talent in many ways. It can be anything, I like to write on blogs, Animal Sites, & I love to promote, & talk on the phone, If there was someone to talk to in the middle of the night, that would be me.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I like the internet, our window to the world.
Happy 2011, Carol
Thanks for stopping by, Carol. I also love the access that the Internet gives us, and at odd hours too.
ReplyDeleteEtta, we all remember you from Mrs. Fretz's fifth grade class. And Mrs. Nace's fourth grade class where you were a wonderful understudy. And possibly even Miss Brommer's third grade class. We all missed you when you left in the middle of the school year. It's so wonderful to find people who were forever lost to us in the old pre-internet era, and to be able to say "hi" across the miles and years. Fifty years later, I love your story.
ReplyDeleteJudy, thanks for your comment. I actually went to school in Sellersville in 3rd grade. Second grade and then fourth and start of fifth were in Perkasie. So no Miss Brommer.
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