What We Remember

Not so long ago, I was challenged to remember my teachers' names through the years.  (It was a Facebook thing.)  Because of our nomadic Navy life when I was a child, I often had two teachers in one grade due to location changes.  I had to sit down with a piece of paper to write down my teachers' names...and there were blanks.

Kdg--California--Can't remember the name.
First half of 1st grade--California--can't remember the name.
Second half of 1st grade--Cannon School, Danville, IL--can't remember the name.
First half of 2nd grade--Douglas School, Danville, IL--Mrs. Gunnar...maybe.
Second half of 2nd grade--Northeast School--Danville, IL--Mrs. Purkey.
Third grade--Danville, IL--Mrs. Gaumer?
Fourth grade--Danville, IL--Mrs. Rowe
First half of 5th grade--Sasebo, Japan--Miss Bruntz
Second half of 5th grade--Woodland School, rural Streator, IL--can't remember the name.
Sixth grade--Oak Park, IL--Mr. Maas
Seventh grade--Oak Park, IL--Miss Lindfors
Eighth grade--Oak Park, IL--Mrs. Buenz  (Miss Lindfors got married.)

Truth be known, I can't even remember exactly what year I was in which school.
So, what DO I remember?  In fact, what do WE remember about our childhood?  In my experience, we remember the really good things and the things that hurt us.  Nothing in between.

I was a good student and a good kid.  (That was both a blessing and a curse.)  In elementary school, I was a straight-A student and fairly basked in everyone's approval.  Teachers loved me, or so I wanted to believe.  Along about second grade, I ran into a teacher who horrified me by shaming me, twice, in front of the class.  The first time came in November of that year.  We were finger-painting, told to paint whatever we wanted.  I saw that everyone was doing turkeys.  I didn't want to do what everyone else was doing, so I just did a design.  One other girl did the same.  As the papers were spread out on the floor along the walls to dry, the teacher took the other girl and me around the room to shame us:  "Look what the other children did.  They did turkeys.  And what did YOU do?  Nothing!"  I was mortified.  If we had been told to do a turkey, I would have done a turkey--such was my make-up.

The next time, we were given math worksheets.  Everyone had a different sheet.  Mine was a subtraction sheet of story problems.  The tag line for each problem was "Was the change right?"  I read it as "Was the chance right?"  And although it didn't make much sense to me, I thought that every chance of getting change, no matter the problem, was okay with me.  The next day, the teacher was reading my paper (without naming me, but I knew) in front of the class and making it seem as though I was a terrible person for making so many wrong answers.

And that is ALL I remember about that year and that teacher.

What else do I remember?  The next second grade teacher that I had recognized my abilities.  She gave me a book to read on my own, which she didn't do with anyone else.  I remember it well.  It was  Miracle on 34th Street.  I felt special.

I remember once--ONCE--when my mother sat on the floor and played the Uncle Wiggly board game with me.  We had just moved to Danville, IL, from Hawaii where Dad had been stationed when his ship was in dry dock.  I was in first grade.  We were in a rental home that wouldn't be ours for long.  Most of the time, "us kids" were expected to entertain ourselves, but I was in a strange house in a strange town in a strange school, and knew no one.  Probably giving in to my whining, Mom actually gave up whatever it was she was doing to get down on my level and play with me.  It was special enough that I have glimpses of that as one of my earliest memories. 

I remember where I was and what I was doing when President Kennedy was assassinated, and how much we all cried in the days that followed.  I remember the day Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, and waking up in my college dormitory room awhile later to the news that Robert Kennedy had also been assassinated.  I remember sitting up and crying out, "What has become of us??"

In my career, I was entrusted with teaching other people's children.  I did the best I could NOT to give them the awful moments that they might remember later.  Once...ONCE...I gave in to sarcasm and student shaming.  A kid I had in a high school--the son of a police officer--had left one of his graded-and-returned papers behind on the floor.  On it, he had written "F*** you, Ms. McNary".  The next day, he was challenging me about something in front of the class.  I said, "By the way, I got your love note."  What transpired after that went something like this:
HE:  What love note?
ME:  The one that said "F*** you, Ms. McNary."  (The boys that sat around him started to hoot.)
That is probably the nicest thing anyone said to me all day.  I mean, I am single.  I appreciate that you are encouraging my love life.
HE:  (Blushing and quite embarrassed.)  Can I have the paper back?
ME:  No.  I am keeping it for evidence.
I never had another moment's problem with that kid.  I never did anything with the paper at all.  I didn't call his parents.  I just let him stew about when the shoe would fall.  To this day, I wonder if that was one of the only ugly moments he would remember about me.

I remember the details when my grandparents and parents died.  I remember the details of when my dear sister and I got emotionally sideways for a couple of months over a comment that was alcohol-driven, and my reaction that was also alcohol-driven.  I remember the awful hurt/betrayal/depression that I endured when my daughter decided to go a different direction than anything I had ever imagined she would do.

By the preponderance of the evidence, it would appear that what we--or at least I--remember in the long-ago past has to do with pain.  I can remember even tiny details about my former husband's marital transgressions, to the degree that I don't think well of him.  If we had ever been able to sit down and talk about it on an honest level, things would be different.  It just never happened, and won't.  Meanwhile, I moved on, long ago.

Yet all of those long-ago memories are still in my brain.  Thank God, I learned to forgive the trespasses as I have asked other to forgive mine.  Old age regrets?  Not too many!