A blank screen stands before me with my thoughts
heavily under tense strain, and pressure. Sitting on a wooden chair by an antic
desk, I stare at the computer with a look of great distress. For what seems
like the hundredth time I am typing yet another essay, but this time it’s a bit
personal. In basic retrospect I’ve been assigned to write how my opinion on
writing, or reading was shaped by any early memory I might recall. With that in
mind I over think it all as usual, and decided to start with a question to
ponder with. “Why can’t I enjoy writing with a clear sense of mind like I do
with reading?” I said thinking out loud. Letting my mind wonder with that
question, I opened one of cabinets the in the desk for some inspiration. Inside
laid one of my first year books dating back to 2001, so I opened it up for
nostalgia purposes. Looking through it the pages brought a moment of
inspiration, and whisked me back 14 years ago to my early second month of
school ever. I start to rapidly type on my keyboard.
It’s almost
as if it were a life time ago, but I remember it vividly. The sun shined a
shade darker during that early autumn morning of October 2001. Colorful leaves
were fluttering away with the slightly chilly breeze as I got off my plain
yellow bus on Lynnhaven Road in on suburban Virginia Beach, Virginia. I was an average
sized 51/2 year old in dark blue sweat pants, and jacket with a rather plain
haircut with the bangs cut straight across which I would find very funny now. I
was also a bit hyper but that’s beside the point. The bricked school building
of old Brookwood Elemetary laid before me like a clash of two worlds in my
younger mind. On one hand I was thinking with glee about playing games with my
classmates, but on the other hand I felt a bit intimidated by our teacher. Let’s
just call her Ms. Tisk for the sake of foreshadowing.
As I entered
the building I passed through a tall tan hallway like I have been for the past
month sense I started. It was swarming with excitement like a hive of bees with
the amount of teachers guiding children to their intended classrooms, and there
amongst them was my first teacher Ms. Tisk. She was perhaps a little over 5
feet in height with a slightly red toned contrasting light tanned skin, a
little pouchy circumference (body), dark deep blue eyes, short dark brown hair,
an unwelcoming expression, and carried a stern southern accent. Her expressions
always seemed angry, mean, and full of hate to me as she gathered us around to
enter the tall door leading into the classroom.
The classroom
itself was setup the same as always as I entered the room second-to-last. Bicycles hanged from the far side of the room
while the right side contained a dark green chalkboard with the poster of the alphabet
stapled above it. Standing before the board was a high chair facing a wide
royal blue mat where the children were sitting crisscross upon as I joined them
with Ms. Tisk following closely from behind as she made her way towards the
chair.
The
class was in session, and my classmates quickly “shhh’d,” one another into
silence. The attention for the most part was on the teacher as she took attendance
with her still icy glance. Then proceeded to have us play a simple fun word
game with cards, followed by pronouncing the words through sounding them out
aloud to each other. I remember the words were something like ‘of, it, get, when,
can, father, mother, brother, the,’ and so on. The words themselves were easy
to repeat aloud aside from my slight speech problem that part was easy at the
time. Each card had a curious number in the upper right corner ranging from 1
to 10 for each of the 10 words. It was enjoyable in till I heard on the lines
of, “Children! Go to your assigned desk, and have a pencil in hand,” Ms. Tisk
had ordered. I neglected to mention that her personality was a bit
authoritarian which is another way of saying she expect obedience.
Why was
she a kindergarten teacher? To this day I still don’t know, but continuing.
The small
desks were encompassing the blue mat as I took my seat with my back facing the
bicycles. As everyone else made it to their seats Ms. Tisk passed around what
was to be my first spelling test, or probably my first test of any kind really.
Nevertheless she explained what it was, how I had to keep my voice at a near
whisper, and that I had to finish it correctly before I could join my classmates
in the cafeteria for a midday meal. The test itself was labeled 1 through 10
like the cards, and like the cards I had to match that word I saw with the
number.
Slowly
I was making process on the words, but there was a tad bit of trouble. I kept
getting distracted by little things like the sound of Ms. Tisk’s footsteps
traversing the room, and the words didn’t come out quite right in my head, so I
tried to silently pronounce them to myself. “Oo-fah,” I softly muttered as I put
down ‘uf’ for the word ‘of’ for number two. At that point it had seemed to Ms.
Tisk that I was strictly trying to disrupt her class, or have others cheat off
me because she quickly tried to silence me. She approached my desk, and scanned
my paper with a look of disgust at my spelling then gave me a warning saying to
“use my inside voice to properly write out the words” or else I’d be “put into
the corner”. That didn’t help much at all considering I was already struggling
just trying to remember the words.
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