The Chalk Whipper

The following is a throw-back blog post from My Space and a testimony of how different the perspective of adults and children can be with, for the children, their life experience thus far and limited capacity of awareness and understanding as well as, on behalf of the adult in this story, a lack of compassion and awareness of the perspective of the child's experience. Things such as in this nature of this story have evolved immensely since my 1st grade experience in 1984/85 and, while I've come to be to grant grace for whatever reasons our teacher had for her behaviors, ....actually, as I type this, I'm not feeling grace and experiencing the emotions of anger, yet, towards her and tears are welling up in my eyes as I'm taken back to the memories of that classroom. I will take this as a sign of healing in progress through the telling of this story and the witnessing of my inner child as well as my cousin's inner child and, as we are all one, the inner child of all who've experienced such situations and more. As we heal together we rise together.

So, I invite you to take a few moments to read on. And, as you do, call your inner child into your lap, holding them with unconditional love and compassion, tell them it is ok to be who they are. Tell them it is ok to use their voice and what they say and how they feel DOES matter. Let them know that whenever they are feeling sad, hurt, scared...or feeling that way for another, that you are going to be there to comfort them and love them unconditionally. As we do this we collectively heal lineages of pain and programming while merging and ascending timelines in the now.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

 The Chalk Whipper

Category: Blogging

This is my first Creative Nonfiction assignment- I'm also taking Ethics. Both are online courses and have 16 weeks of material compressed into 5 weeks. The only writing (blogging) I'll be doing for those 5 weeks will be my assignments- one of which is to keep journal entries for two weeks (cumulative not consecutive)

This is the revised version

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My first grade teacher was a cruel woman. Mrs. Matuska. Even her name sounds cruel. I really can't remember what she looked like. I'd venture a guess to say curly grey hair and glasses. I think she may have been of medium build. Regardless though, the sheer fear of her, and her disrespect to my cousin, is what crops up in my gut when I look back on my early years of education.

When the school year started I was SO excited because my cousin, Jeremy, was in the same class as me. We were the same age and spent a lot of time together. He was more like my brother than my cousin.

Jeremy had, what they used to call, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I believe there was a lack of education on that subject back 1985. I don't think this particular teacher had any understanding of the disorder what-so-ever. You see, whenever Jeremy would get distracted or start rocking front to back (a side effect of his Ritalin), Mrs. Matuska would scream at him to "Stop!" and "control" himself. When her efforts to keep him still and focused were fruitless, she resorted to throwing chalk at him.

  Imagine now, for a minute, that you are six years old again. You know you're a little bit different from everyone else. You're in a new classroom with new students. The only person you know is your cute little cousin Kellie (that's me). Everything is big, intimidating and distracting. The walls are plastered with brightly colored pictures and borders, letters and numbers, the shelves are packed with games and activities. There is a row of windows along the back wall that brightens the room to the point that you may as well be outside. Most of these windows are open. You can hear the cars driving by. You listen to the other classes playing outside, the Hopscotchers counting and hopping, the Red Rovers coming right over. You can hear every time there is a Green Light go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go STOP! Not to mention every command that Simon says. SMACK! You're hit in the head with a piece of chalk. You weren't paying attention to the teacher. Shame on you! How dare you be distracted and let your mind wander! Now everyone knows- everyone in the room knows what a bad person you are for not listening and that behavior of this sort means that you deserve to be humiliated.

I truly hated her. Poor Jeremy, it's hard to stand up for yourself when you have a child's voice in an adult world. Every time that mean old bat so much as gave him a dirty look- I gave her the look of death. Thinking about it now, I don't believe I was very intimidating to her. She did, however, know that I didn't approve of her treatment towards Jeremy.

One day, at milk time, she pushed me too far. She was mean to me. That was the final straw.

I didn't like the taste of the white milk. On this particular morning my mom had given me a small container of Nesquik for flavoring. Milk time consisted of a bathroom break and five minutes for milk drinking. My tummy was upset that morning. I spent too much time on my potty break. When I returned to the room with my container of milk I noticed that most of the other kids were done drinking theirs. I opened my carton, dumped in the chocolate Nesquik powder, and shook it up. Just as I took my first sip I heard Mrs. Meantuska say "Milk time is over! Go throw that away!" A shockwave of remorse moved through me. My mom had given me that Nesquik! I can't throw it away! (*When I was young I believed that my food and other inanimate objects had feelings. If I threw them away or didn't eat them their feelings would be hurt) I didn't want to hurt my mom's feelings by throwing away something she'd given to me. I felt my belly churn and a huge lump formed in my throat. I held my tears back as hard as I could, walked to the waste basket to deposit my milk, and then, walked right out the door. The horrid teacher hadn't bothered to pay any attention to me after barking her command. She didn't know I'd left. I walked the two blocks my house sobbing.

Pig tails trailing, I ran up the front steps and flew through the kitchen door. My mom came running to see what all the commotion was about. I explained to her through my sniffles what happened. "…..a-a-and th-then she m-ma-made me throw it awaaaaayyy!" -Now would be a good time to mention that my parents and Jeremy's parents were not fans of our teacher either. The telephone rang. We both knew why.

Reluctantly, my mom made me go back to school that day.

After that, I didn't bring Nesquik to school anymore. Mrs. Matuska still threw her chalk at my cousin. I still gave her the evil eye. Jeremy and I were never assigned to the same classroom again.

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1:57 AM

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*I now understand that the energies I sensed from my food were the frequencies of the food and the loving intentions of those who prepared it.