In my kindergarten class at Greenway School in Bisbee, Arizona, I got in hot water the day we were making Japanese lanterns out of pieces of green construction paper. I somehow misunderstood the directions and ended up with a piece of green construction paper fringe. Knowing what I know now and about my struggles to see the black board in first grade, there was probably a good reason I misunderstood, but the teacher was having none of it. I was told to take my blanket and was exiled to the floor of the teacher\u2019s closet for the remainder of the day. It was like being shipped into exile.??My first grade teacher, <\/p>\n
Mrs. Kelly, gave me a seat in the front row so I could see the blackboard. One day, on the way to school, I was attacked by a crow who was trying to pull the gold barrettes out of my hair.
\nMr. Treceise came running out into the street with his rake and chased the crow away. He then walked me to school. I was late, of course, and when I told Mrs. Kelly why I was late, I don\u2019t think she believed a word of it, but at least she didn\u2019t make me spend the day in her closet.??<\/p>\n
Mrs. Spangler in second grade set me on course for becoming a writer by having a huge collection of books in her classroom, and it was while reading her copies of Frank Baum\u2019s Oz books when I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.??<\/p>\n
Mrs. Gilbert in third grade gave me a C in penmanship because she said I slanted my letters in the wrong direction. I still do, and there are literally thousands of samples of my mis-slanted signature out in the world in autographed copies of my books.??<\/p>\n
Mrs. Dye was my fourth grade teacher. I didn\u2019t know her well because we had substitutes for most of that year. I had no idea she was seriously ill and would die during the summer of that very year.??<\/p>\n
Miss Stammer, my fifth grade teacher, was straight out of Chicago and drove a yellow Studebaker. She was tough. When Floyd Lucero, one of the kids in the class, lipped off at her, she picked him up by his shirt collar and carried him one handed to the principal\u2019s office in another building.??<\/p>\n
Mrs. Watkins, my sixth grade teacher, loved outlining, but she certainly didn\u2019t pass her affinity for that on to me. I hated outlining then and nothing that has happened to me in the intervening decades has changed my mind about that.??<\/p>\n
For 7th and 8th grade we moved from class to class with four different teachers\u2014Mr. Norton, Mr. Goodson, Mrs. Upton, and, Mrs. Hennessey. ??<\/p>\n
But who\u2019s the one Greenway teacher whose name I don\u2019t remember? The one from Kindergarten. ??<\/p>\n
I remember all my teachers from Bisbee High School. I had an excellent crop of teachers there, and I\u2019ve recounted happy memories from many of them here in my blog. I know remembrances of Richard Guerra, Rachel Riggins, and Eva Medigovich have all appeared here, but there were others who were equally outstanding. Last night, lying in bed, I counted them off in my head, and was able to recount the name of every single of one of my high school teachers with no exceptions.??<\/p>\n
Ditto for my college instructors and professors–Sidney Shiffer, Byrd Granger, Evelyn Kirmse, Paul Rosenblatt, Jack Huggins, Eleanor Saltus, and many others. Those were the folks who took a small town Arizona girl and educated her to live in the real world. For years, I was unable to recall the name of the Creative Writing professor who refused me admission to his class in 1964. A few weeks ago someone wrote to me and mentioned his name. I recognized it as soon as I saw it, but even though I know it now, I\u2019m not going to mention it here. I don\u2019t want to, and there\u2019s no need. Then there was the Western Civ professor who announced to an auditorium of 300 students that \u201cthe only thing more contemptible than undergraduate males were undergraduate females.” I don\u2019t remember his name, either.??<\/p>\n
And I think that\u2019s the whole point. Although I have a wonderful ability to remember people and things, I\u2019ve been given the gift of being able to forget the names of the people who ‘done me wrong,\u2019 as it were. I may remember their actions, but I don\u2019t have to remember the names of the doers of those deed. By allowing their identities to slip from my mind, I\u2019ve removed the power they held over me and my life. I\u2019m no longer that shamed little girl lying on her blanket in the teacher\u2019s closet. I\u2019m someone else now, and she no longer exists.??<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly what the gift of forgetting is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my kindergarten class at Greenway School in Bisbee, Arizona, I got in hot water the day we were making Japanese lanterns out of pieces of green construction paper. I somehow misunderstood the directions and ended up with a piece of green construction paper fringe. Knowing what I know now and about my struggles to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-Cd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/2371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}