My grade 3 teacher was not nice. She didn’t get me. I was nine. I’m not sure what she didn’t get but we didn’t gel.
I was nine.
I remember very little of that school year. I can visualize the classroom. I can remember that she used to give us Bretton crackers if we had belly aches.
I remember she used turn out the lights, and lit candles, and played records (usually Putting on the Ritz), and we’d have quiet creative writing time.
And I remember when I asked if I could move my desk beside Ali C’s, she yelled at me and called me a self centred idiot.
I was nine.
Was I annoying? Maybe. Did I talk a lot? OMG totally! Had I maybe really gotten to know a girl I thought was super cool and super nice and just wanted to sit beside her and she agreed? Yes. Most definitely.
I did not deserve to be called a horrible name by a teacher.
I was nine.
Why am I not embarrassed to share this?
Because, I was nine.
I have remembered being called a self-centered idiot, by my teacher in grade 3, for my entire life.
What I had forgotten about, was the writing by candle light.
I’m a writer – clearly. It is how I express myself. It’s where I’ve always turned to talk my way through whatever I can’t understand or process.
Maybe, indirectly, that teacher taught me the power of silence and calm, to collect my thoughts, and to find a way to deal with whatever I was feeling.
I’m not claiming to remember if that incident preceded my refuge in words.
What I do know, for sure, is that that is the first memory I have of finding love in what has grown to be my biggest passion.
I can go back there, to that grade 3 classroom. Putt’n on the Ritz is on, the room lit by candle light. I’m hiding behind my blue tri-fold creative writing folder, sitting quietly, writing my stories.
As it turns out, the part of grade 3 that defined me, more than the teacher who made me feel small, is the room I was given, the grace I was given, to explore what would become, my greatest, most available, softest place to land.
Photo by George Becker from Pexels
The Epiphany Years 