Oh dear! I intended to write about schoolyard games, but a memory sidetracked me. This may appear to be all about poor little Rose Mary, but I hope that people think about its message.
As Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, my years in the 1876 Knightstown Academy building and at the adjoining high school were “the best of times and the worst of times.” Some people are “golden” — attractive, popular, entitled. I was not one of them.
I am you, and you are me. I suspect that even the “golden” ones among you have secret hurts and inadequacies. In Greek mythology, Pandora received a beautiful sealed vase. She was warned not to open it, but how could she resist? When she unsealed it all of the world’s evils escaped from it. Beware when you start rummaging around in your mental attic!
During first grade, I fell down in deep mud out in the schoolyard. A boot, shoe and sock came off, and my clothes were muddied. “Boo hoo, hoo, hoo!” The teacher called, and my sister brought a change of clothes. Neither was pleased.
That was also the teacher who would point at the big Dick and Jane book and say scornfully, “Read, Rose Mary, read!” Hell, I couldn’t even see the words, let alone read them. She made it clear that she thought I was stupid. Seventy years later, I remember my frustrated family trying to teach me to read by making me repeat the alphabet after them. They might as well have been speaking Greek! That witch who caused me to feel eternally inadequate is kept shut up in an ugly little box at the very bottom of the pile in my mental attic, but occasionally she manages to escape.
When they fit me with glasses I was in Heaven! I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz during second grade which, unfortunately, she also taught, and I have never stopped reading. The inscription above the stacks of the great library of ancient Alexandria said, “The place of the cure of the soul.” I understand that perfectly. The library became my refuge just as it did with the wonderful writer, Pat Conroy. I still remember my library number: 1369.
Fortunately I moved on to darling, kind teachers. However, a flock of chickens will choose one chicken to peck. My place was at the bottom of my peers’ pecking order. You would think that Homo sapiens, supposedly the most intelligent being on planet Earth, would be smarter than a birdbrain. Not so!
If one is different — too stupid, too smart, too fat, poor, unattractive, not stylishly dressed, socially inept, of the wrong race, religion or family background — one may be excluded, bullied or subjected to ridicule by the birdbrains.
Although I became blessed when accepted by a group of girls, the ridicule continued on through high school. I survived, albeit with secret injuries, but managed to overcome and plaster over my hurts and achieve a good education and life with a wonderful husband. Also, I learned to believe in the basic worth of all people.
They say, “Children are cruel.” as if this is the natural order of things. It shouldn’t be. A boy who attended the school where Bill once taught committed suicide because of bullies. These days electronic media are used to send bullying hate messages. Recently two girls stabbed a friend 19 times as a sacrifice to “Slender Man,” an Internet horror show character, whom they thought was real.
We are the world’s wealthiest people, but many Americans are spiritually bankrupt. Friend Jean watched a couple and their two children in a restaurant. The parents spent all their time on their phones, ignoring the kids. What kind of parenting is that? People give their children material possessions and turn them loose on the Internet, but make little effort to instill in them a sense of morality, kindness and the worth of others. wclarke@comcast.net