My Elementary School Teachers, Part 1: As The Twig Is Bent

"As the twig is bent the tree inclines," Virgil wrote. Schoolteachers do just about more twig-bending than anyone. Mine were no exception. In elementary school, the teachers were mostly benign; I didn't get into the real sadist, misfit, misanthropic, lecherous, dried-up, bitter, shell-shocked, racist and jingoistic types until I hit junior- and senior-high school.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Crowley, was a warm and kindly woman. She wore plaid. She had a reassuring smile, auburn hair, full lips, and a light dusting of freckles. My memories of her circle around reading, singing, drawing, and graham crackers and milk. I remember no traumas or anything untoward—a few tantrums by my fellow pupils, and an angry father bursting in once, fuming over some imagined injury to Sally or Billy's chrysalis psyche.

Mrs. Crowley had the joy, humor, patience and understanding that should be a job requirement for teachers. I was called on the carpet once, in an incident I wrote about earlier, for returning from a camping trip, and peppering my "Show And Tell" speech with a few f**ks, c********rs, and s**ts, capped off with the interesting hand gesture I'd learned to perform on the trip. My father got in more hot water than I did over that weekend.

The nine months I florished in Mrs. Crowley's warm benevolence was the calm before the storm. Those happy days would soon fade away—when I was savagely flung into the charge of Miss Echo, the very terrestrial personification of Sycorax. Her classroom was my Bastille or Tower of London.


click to enlarge Jack, and John, Sr. at the Bumping River

Miss Echo, my first grade teacher, was a hirsute, cranky, unsettling, misanthropic, foul smelling battleaxe a few months from retirement. As she ground out the last few months before her pension kicked in, she was determined to ricochet every slight and indignity she had suffered in her forty-year career back at the miscreants she fingered as the authors of her miserable life.




illustration from http://www.fearofflyingdoctor.com/

Even with a brother and father dying, a plunge into poverty, the many hazards and heartbreaks of adolescence, and a life at odds with the police, I was more traumatized by my first grade teacher than by anyone or everything else during my elementary years, and maybe everything and anyone since. At the very least Mrs. Echo instilled in me a life-long "issue" *cough cough* with authority figures [1] ranging from policemen to teachers,bank clerks, meter maids, foremen, shop stewards, union reps, counselors, principals, bosses, government clerks, principals, border guards, benefit screeners, poetry and art juries, insurance adjusters, Priests, televangelists, politicians, pontiffs, Judges, and maybe even pilots.

I just did a G.I.S. for "authority figures" and it brought me to The Fear of Flying Doctor website where I learned that my fear of flying, a/k/a aviophobia, may stem from a problem with authority figures! Can I blame that on Mrs. Echo too?



Miss Echo's voice could curdle milk, and perhaps even gasoline. Fingernails raked across a slate blackboard were mellifluous compared to the brittle, quavering rasp of her voice. She was a last vestige of the school of thought that punished southpaws to "cure" them. I was a rightie, but she never failed to belittle my handwriting, nor my parents for their genes, and for tolerating my slovenly hand.

The words "poor coordination" were etched into my brain until I came to believe it. I received no credit for being able to read at the fifth grade level, nor for the actual content of my writing. She treated me as borderline retarded due to my difficulties in executing cursive script via the long since discredited Palmer Method. This entire year of school was unique for me—it was the only time in my 16 year education that I didn't actually enjoy going to school. I can only guess at how many other young souls she twisted and even destroyed in her forty miserable years of teaching? How many serial killers, petty criminals and wife-beaters had she unleashed on society in her four decades at the helm? In the end, my handwriting didn't matter at all, and in the end, perhaps she was the one who taught me 1) how to not worry; 2) how to amble through life as if it were made for me; and 3) that maybe a healthy disdain of authority figures was not such a bad thing at all.

[1] Perhaps a problem with authority figures is not the deviant behavior we've been lead to believe. After all, the Milgram experiment showed that over 60% of a sample of Americans demonstrated willingness to severely torture another person when given orders from an "appropriate" authority figure.
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Now, let's have an Amazon moment. If you liked this story, you might like these other stories appearing in All This Is That about Jack Brummet growing up, and having grown:

Fishing With The Old Man Uncle Romey Uncle Guy, more hillbilly cred, and living a good life My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash. My Dog Slugger Hucking Eggs in Kent, Washington
Square Dance At Valley Elementary
Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils
Hillbilly Cred
Growing Up In Kent, Washington: Tarheels, Hayseeds, Hillbillies, and Crackers
Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails
The Time I Got Drunk With Roy Rogers
My Worst Jobs: 50 Tons of Sand
My Worst Jobs: McGoo
My Pathetic Political Career
The Month They Tried To Kill Me
My Worst Jobs - Brewburger
Stopping By Richard Nixon's
Defensive Daydreaming
My Worst Jobs - Design Insanity - Hype, Shuck, and Jive In The Dot-Com Years
My Worst Jobs - SALSA
Jerry Melin, still missing, still missed
18,906 Days On Turtle Island
The Day I went Bald My Jobs (List Number 9)
My Favorite Rock and Jazz Shows
More Shows I've seen over the years
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