The collapse of my second grade world could not have happened at a more precisely unexpected moment. I had just finished what I though was a cleverly covert conversation with the student to my left; name forgotten, topic lost to posterity.
With an elbow on my desk, I rested my head in my hand and smiled diagonally at pretty, dainty classmate, Dianne Tilton, who was seated across from me. The height of wellbeing I felt at that moment began a sharp and relentless decline when Miss Curran’s harsh, authoritative voice shattered my little world.
“Theresa Bickford! Into the hall for talking!”
Like a criminal after sentencing, I rose in dejected silence and followed my blue-dressed teacher/guard from the warm brightness of the classroom to the labyrinthine outer darkness of the dimly lit school hallway, where there was soon to follow a great weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Stand in the corner!” I was told, and Miss Curran went back inside, the sour scent of her old lady perfume lingering there with me as if to enforce her command. Alone and terrified, I cried, for in a time when school authorities were allowed to administer corporal punishment, I feared that Mr. Miles, the school principal, would discover me and drag me to his office to paddle me, like he had fellow student, Scott Finemore on more than one occasion.
Poor Scott. I remember him returning to class one day with red eyes, red face, and, though hidden from sight, an apparently red bottom. So, with all of my fingers crossed (and probably my thumbs), I hoped and prayed that big, hulking Mr. Miles would not happen upon me, in search of a spank-ee.
Miss Curran was a 60-something, white-haired matriarch who ruled the class with an iron chalkboard eraser. Wrinkles puckered around heavily made-up eyes and a bright red lipstick-painted mouth that made her seem vampirish.
She had arranged the class into several behaviorally segregated sections, with desks grouped in clusters of four, joined and facing each other. The worst behaved students sat in the back of the class like diseased lepers, with progressively better behaved children seated toward the front. I had been part of the elite, best behaved set among whom aforementioned Diane was a model of good and acceptable behavior.
Diane, with her long, Indian braids and classy demeanor (for a second grader) was the princess of the class, and presented a standard of child-to-teacher obedience that earned her the unspoken designation of teacher’s pet.
In the hall, I stood in my invisible chains while a neighboring class was ushered in to join mine in watching a nature program on PBS. The children prodded and ridiculed me as they slowly filed in to the classroom, causing my embarrassment and shame to rise to nearly the same precipitous height as my fear.
“Ha, ha! You got caught!” “You’re in trouble!” “Ha, ha! You’re gonna miss the program!”
Forgotten was the previous scandal: Susan La Roche, who was caught chewing gum in class. She had been forced to wear the sticky wad on her nose all day, even at recess. Unanticipated were the inevitable trespasses of these very children who now harassed me, and which would land them in their own custom-tailored punishments.
My hallway ordeal ended with the departure of the visiting class. Grateful and relieved that I had not encountered the spanking principal, I simply wished to return to the relative obscurity of my desk, where I might lick my wounded psyche and perhaps receive a comforting smile from Diane.
Instead, upon reentering the classroom, I was led by Miss Curran past my former desk mates to the back of the room, and seated in the company of Kevin King, alpha male of the worst behaved cluster. With a devilish grin that promised much torment, like a gargoyle at the gates of the netherworld, Kevin welcomed me. I sat down, stunned, ashamed, and destroyed. How could my life have taken such a drastic, horrible downturn so suddenly?
Kevin was mangy and rough, and lived in a rundown, unpainted house that was later torn down to make room for a McDonald’s. Kevin picked his nose and offered me the boogers. Kevin would grow up to be the disgruntled boyfriend of my childhood friend, Paula and, for some incomprehensibly deranged reason, would lure Paula to his home, incapacitate her, and burn the house down in a murder/suicide.
Sitting across from Kevin, my young mind then knew nothing of the impact of experiences and words on the tender, impressionable hearts of children. As an adult, I have concluded that apparently, neither did Miss Curran.
This led me to wonder, after Paula’s funeral, if a gentler, more insightful second grade teacher could have, in some way, tempered the dark, abusive psyche of a future murderer. Could kind words and a little mercy have helped along the years-long struggle of a sensitive little girl to find acceptance and unconditional love? Maybe not, but maybe.
