 Fifth grade
My teacher was nice, and on the first day of class I was able to write her a note to allow me to use the bathroom. This reminded her that she wanted to put a sign-out sheet on the board, which I liked because I hated writing notes. This was also the year my father died. On December 7, 1997, the police came to the door to tell us that my dad had been killed when an incinerator blew up at the textile plant where he worked. This left my mom, without a job, to take care of 3 kids, me being the youngest at 10. The funeral director was the father of one of my classmates, 'Cheyenne'. At the funeral she took me to a separate room where we played Uno, and she showed me around the whole building. I felt very comfortable around her, partly because she never once said anything about me talking. We became friends, and she came over to my grandmother's house with us one day. As we were leaving I forgot she was there, and started talking like normal. When I realized she was there, I noticed that she had practically no reaction, so I figured it must be ok to talk to her because she wouldn't overreact. I talked to her from then on, and at one of the sleepovers that she often held, I was talking to her. All night, I thought Suzie had heard me but wasn't reacting, so it was ok to talk to her too. I said something directly to her, and she made it obvious that she hadn't heard me after all. She kind of tackle-hugged me, but I still continued talking to her after that. Back in school, a while after the funeral, we were having a test. I didn't have a pen, so I asked Suzie for one. I didn't realize it was out of ink until it was too late to ask her for another one, so I decided to do the test in crayon as it was all I could find in my desk. I finished the test and handed it in, and several minutes later the teacher started yelling, and I really mean yelling, "You're supposed to do the test in PEN, not crayon!" I was so humiliated. Everyone was looking at me like I had just done the worst possible thing ever. I tried to do the best I could in the situation, but I did something terribly WRONG. I guess I must not have been getting the attention I wanted so badly, so I thought by using crayon I would get more attention. I got another pen from Suzie, hoping the teacher would see me ask her for one so she would know why I did the horrible thing I did. I redid the test, barely able to even read my answers because I was trying so hard not to cry. The best part is that there was absolutely nothing hard to understand on my test. The teacher just couldn't imagine that I didn't have a pen, I guess. This was the year we were writing math problems on the board, and my board had a small chip in it right in the middle of my problem. Since we were learning about decimals, this spot made it look like I was doing the problem wrong. The teacher told me to erase the decimal in my problem, but I didn't because I knew I couldn't. I kept looking back and forth between her and the spot, hoping she would get the hint. She kept telling me to erase it, getting madder each time. She finally yelled at me to sit down and had someone else go up and finish it. I was trying not to let her see that I was crying again. There was no apology from the teacher when this person tried to erase the spot but couldn't. In fact, she told me, "You should have shown me that it was a mark on the board." She even sounded mad that I hadn't shown her, as though the whole thing had been my fault. This year a friend of mine and I drew a rather mean picture of a girl in our class. The teacher found it, and we got in trouble. She talked to my friend first, and then called me out to talk to me about it. She asked me if I knew anything about it, and I shook my head 'no'. Then I admitted that I did, and she took us to the principal. On the way she suddenly turned around and yelled at me, telling me I made it so much worse for myself by lying about it. I was terrified, I was always a good kid, I had never been in trouble before. Nothing ever came out of it, we never got in trouble for it. I don't know what the big deal was. All it taught me was that it was ok for other people to make fun of me, but if I did one thing I was in BIG trouble. Previous Page | Next Page
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