Back in 3rd grade Mrs. Crittenden was my teacher. She was a considerable upgrade from my 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Stanton, but was in my eyes never going to live up to the standard set by my beloved 1st grade teacher Mrs Derose.
Mrs. Stanton had
two strikes against her in my book and could never be redeemed. I
did enjoy her reading the Boxcar Children books to us as a class but
she got onto me severely once and made fun of me another time. I had
raised my hand to answer a question and got it wrong. That was fine.
It happens. But when a student after me answered a question
incorrectly she told him he was wrong and then said, “You've got
Jeremy disease!”and the whole class laughed. Nice. I was
confident I knew an answer but was wrong. Big deal. But to use me as
an insult? That was horrible for an eight-year-old!
The
other strike was when somebody in the hall outside class screamed out
as if he was hurling. I said loudly, “Sounds like somebody threw
up!” I was met with a swift rebuke, “That's not appropriate
Jeremy!” But she said it in what to me was a cruel manner. I
didn't like getting in trouble. And bodily functions involving
fluids was fascinating to eight-year-olds.
Mrs.
Derose, what can I say? Really though? I always had fond memories
of her. I was so young that I don't even have many specifics
anymore. I remember we were allowed to play on her Apple computer.
Some game where you rescue a princess. I remember her red hair and
kind smile. I remember the dead octopus she had in a jar. She was
an angel.
Mrs.
Crittenden was a new teacher to our school. I guess she just moved
to town or something. She had a son a year or so older than me (in
high school he'd die tragically in a car accident) and she had a
daughter a year younger than me, so she probably wasn't a first year
teacher.
I
remember we had to do how-to speeches in front of the class. My
topic of choice was ramen noodles. Me, a nine-year-old, was a veteran
of cooking on the stove. I gave the speech very authoritatively and
am sure I got high marks. I brought a pack of beef flavored Smack
ramen noodles and one of my mom's old pots to school. Alas, I did
not have a stove or hot plate. C'est la'vie.
I
got my first detention ever in that class. I was a very social kid
and got caught speaking out of turn a lot. Unfortunately my oldest
son seems to have taken after me in this regard. It's weird though
because as I got older, I became an introvert. Every time we got in
trouble we had to change the crayon on our discipline board. Brown
was detention. Black was after brown. You did not want black. The order was simething like blue, red, green, yellow, orange, brown, black.
The class gasped when I got caught jumping over a chair to move from orange to brown. Nobody had ever earned that horrible distinction!
The class gasped when I got caught jumping over a chair to move from orange to brown. Nobody had ever earned that horrible distinction!
Previously
I wrote about writing numbers ad infinitum in a notebook. Her way of
handing out busy work. That
was actually something I liked though. It oddly gave me a sense of
purpose. Not sure what my purpose was but it kept me occupied.
New
Kids on the Block were still huge at this point. My sister loved
them and hair metal. Grunge music was still about a year from
exploding on the scene. I am not sure of what the conditions were
anymore, but the reward for reaching whatever goal was that Mrs.
Crittenden was going to play the entire NKOTB album Step by Step in
class. Everybody was excited but Wendell Smith and me. We earned
the reward of NKOTB being played and for 45 minutes, or however long
the album was, Wendell and I had our hands planted firmly on our
ears in disgust. Some reward!
The
Gulf War was raging on at this time. Wolf Blitzer made a name for
himself on CNN reporting from Kuwait. The nightly news regularly
showed night vision video of green rockets soaring against a green
sky. Patriotism was strong now. We said our pledge of allegiance
daily. Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the USA” became a hit again.
We sang songs of amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties.
We had a class project inspired by the war. Mrs. Crittenden had us
write letters to active duty military personnel stationed in the
Middle East. I was excited. But it was a horrible idea.
We
were told to write from our hearts. To think about the sacrifices
the soldiers are making and tell them what we feel. I did that.
Unfortunately my mom was in the middle of a breast cancer scare. I
didn't really know what that meant but I knew it could be bad and my
parents were scared. This meant I was scared.
I
told the unnamed soldier that I was grateful for his sacrifice. I
hoped the war would end soon and he would come home safe to his
parents. I told him my dad had been in the Army a few years before.
And I told him I was scared, and I knew he was probably scared to be
at war. That we both were scared and hopefully we would be okay.
Wow. That's a lot of scary heavy stuff for an 18 to 25 year-old kid at war
to read. I hope my teacher read that and didn't send it off. It
probably was therapeutic for me to believe a hero would read that and
think of me. Maybe he would rescue me. But this probably was not great for the mystery soldier to read
from a kid.
My
mom ended up being okay. The scare was just a scare, nothing more.
Some fear of the possible that never was. I had a great best friend for the school year, Matthew Mitchell, but he would move on to his home in Africa. But that summer I'd get a new best friend and then another in the 4th grade.
The
3rd
grade probably introduced differences among students. We realized
that other kids didn't necessarily all have the same interests. I
like this, he likes that. We learned that was okay. We started to
realize we were from different backgrounds. This year I also changed
quite a lot. With the exception of acting, I would never be outgoing
again. I'd never be a troublemaker. I liked my teacher. At the end
of my school career, Mrs. Crittenden would remain one of the ones I'd
look back at most fondly. Then again, there weren't that many teacher
that I hated and her predecessor was one of them. Maybe because my
age it seemed with the Gulf War there ushered in a cultural change as
well. Grunge music rushed onto the scene. Bill Clinton would end
the Reagan/Bush regime. Fox Network really blossomed (peak Married
with Children, the Simpsons, In Living Color, the Arsenio Hall Show
legitimized by Bill Clinton), Hurricane Andrew was the first natural
disaster I was aware of, the Waco Siege, collapse of the USSR, Mike
Tyson raped Desiree Washington, AIDS seemed to become real with the
death of Freddie Mercury and Magic Johnson's announcement.
I
am fully aware that this can probably be said for any randomly picked
couple of years but I lived it and was actually able to be socially
aware of these things happening around me. Therefore it meant more,
dammit. It made for a chaotic backdrop to the events of my 3rd
grade year.
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