FINDING HER PLACE
Years later, she finally fulfills her true potential.
Retired from a successful 25-year career at the telephone company, I finally had the courage to try college.
Decades earlier, my older brother had warned me about the “old biddy” in second grade. Stout and grim with steel-gray curls, Miss Spencer was as different from
Mrs. Raymaker, my beloved first grade teacher, as could be. However, I didn’t find her all that bad. I put stickers on wall charts to mark my efforts and showed flashcards to the class.
Most of all, I liked my seat in the first row.
Miss Spencer’s desk was at the back of the neat rows of desks, where she could spring up to loom over anyone who misbehaved, gave a wrong answer, or put a head down on a desk.
The rows were a ranking system. The first was for the smart kids, and the intelligence of of each succeeding row decreased. The last row was for those for whom there was little hope. I felt sorry for the pupils who weren’t first-row material, but, typical of the privileged, I never questioned the moral rightness of the system.
But first-row status came with constant risk. More than once, Shirley Mooney cried when Miss Spencer threatened to demote her. Joe, a lovable clown and one of the few boys I liked, wailed and begged when he was sent back. I determined that would never happen to me.
But one day, I forgot to bring back my weekly reader from home. Miss Spencer called me to her desk and tied a string to my middle finger. It was hideous—6 feet long at least—and I had to wear it for the rest of the day. Then she told me to move to the third row. Without a word or a tear, I made the change. With that, I sank from a first-row up-and-comer to a nonentity.
At recess, I rolled the string into a tight ball in my palm to hide my shame. I was grateful that Miss Spencer had at least removed the tell-tale twine before I went home. I never told my family, and certainly not my brother. Dispirited, I lost the joy of going to school.
It pains me now how fully I accepted that teacher’s judgment. I became a middling student, rarely asking teachers for help, and graduated high school with a C-plus average.
Years of achievement in my career followed, before I applied to college at 54. I graduated four years later from the University of Puget Sound with a degree in English literature. My GPA of 3.8 was that of a first-rower.