Quiet Time

Quiet Time

Second grade was a pivotal year for me. I was a shy boy back in 1967. Back then, school began with first grade with no such thing as pre-school or kindergarten. So when I reached second grade, I was still socially reclusive. Being the fourth out of five kids in my family, I suppose I sort of disappeared and learned the benefits of anonymity.

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson-a seemingly 100 year old great grandmother with long gray hair neatly pinned in a bun, scared the life out of me as she paraded around the room with her long plain dress and granny boots swatting her ruler on the hands of inattentive pupils. I quickly learned to become invisible in her room. My natural tendency to not draw attention to myself was reinforced.

Well trained, I entered second grade already broken in to the harsher ways of that old school. I knew that my potential second grade teachers were not likely to be any more compassionate. Little did I know that sometime in the late days of summer vacation, I drew the proverbial short straw.

My second grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Worley, and I grew to resent her. She wasn’t old, but she was a broken woman. Early in the year, she went in to gory detail of the horrible injury she sustained in an automobile accident. Apparently, her back injury was so severe that she was in constant angering pain, and she was forced to wear a cumbersome and painful back brace. I remember one day, she showed all thirty-five of us that brace. I was appalled. People never displayed partial disabilities in public back then. In fact, people with physical or mental disabilities were completely hidden away from society. In my mind, Mrs. Worley was mean and insane. To top it all off, she was an incredibly boring teacher, shoving paper after paper at us. I did become pretty good at copying words off the board onto my lined paper with my fat blue pencil. My only thrill came when I got use a fat green pencil instead of the fat blue one.

Two things happened that year that I will never forget, one traumatic and one hilarious in a mean sort of way.

Every day in that class, Mrs. Worley would make us all sit down …wait a minute…she always made us sit down. Every day, Mrs. Worley made us put our heads down on desktops for a quiet time. This period lasted at least 30 minutes, sometimes longer. During this period, there was only one rule, “No Talking!” She spent that time busily adjusting her brace, grading and commenting on papers, and applying make-up. Her antennae were always alert for the slightest stray peep from any classmate.

I remember dreaming every day of escaping that torturous room. I knew how I could make that happen. Right outside our huge classroom windows was a fantastic, old white pine tree. From just outside our first floor window, the tree went up, like Jack’s beanstalk. I never could see the tree’s top, though I always did try to strain my eyes to see around the edge of the window’s top. I wished I had curved vision to see around edges and corners. I imagined that to escape I would bolt out the open window and quickly climb the accommodating pine to the clouds and a special cloud city. There I could spend my time doing things I liked doing like riding my bike or tossing a baseball around.

One day during quiet time, my dream was interrupted by the annoying girl who sat right behind me in our boy/girl/boy/girl classroom. Lisa was a gabby blond who was always poking and bugging me. She was the worst kind of gossip-monger. Relentless with fresh information in her clutches, she would take all kinds of chances in spreading her venomous tales. I tried ignoring her, but it became increasingly more difficult as she kept poking me in the back. Finally, in desperation, I turned around and whispered, “What??”

Unfortunately for me, that’s when Mrs. Worley’s radar alerted her to my motion and sound. Her beady and freshly shadowed eyes fixed on me like Sauron locking in on Frodo’s ring. I knew at that moment, that I was doomed, and I began to cry even before she screamed, “Tommy Ryder! Were you whispering during quiet time???”

[Sobbing uncontrollably now] “…[sniff] y-eh-eh-es ma’am.”

“You know you’re not allowed to be whispering during quiet time. I can’t believe this! Get out in the hall! Now!”

There is no way in real words to describe how much her ranting and strong words have scarred me. I had been through my whole school career up to that point without getting in to any kind of trouble, and in fact, I would go through the rest of my school career without ever getting in to any other trouble. But on this day, I was sent to the hallway with thirty-five pairs of frightened eyes and one pair of enraged eyes following me. That was only the beginning of my most public humiliation.

Outside the room, I instinctively knew to stand stony still, rigid against the sand colored block wall. My tears cascaded down my face in seemingly endless waves. I was furious. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. Anger and tears mixed freely. I hated that mean lady. I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything! That’s all I could think.

After a few minutes, I caught a blurry figure approaching from down the hall. I was probably too emotional to truly understand my impending misfortune. For coming down the hall was none other than Mr. Vaughan, the school principal. He was a big man and all I knew of him was to fear him. I hoped my cloak of invisibility would serve me here, but its powers had obviously weakened.

To my complete horror, he stopped, stared at me, and said, “Why are you out in the hall son?”

That’s all it took, a fresh wave of tears came down my face as I attempted to explain in stammering fashion how I had been whispering during quiet time. He shook his head and told me that he had better not ever find me in the hall again. Then he walked on. I was now completely embarrassed. Mr. Vaughan would never look at me the same way again, I believed earnestly.

Soon, Mrs. Worley came out in the hall and requested that I open my hand. When I obediently complied, she placed a note in my hand and instructed me to take it home and get it signed by my mother. Then she ushered me back into the room and the spotlight of 69 eyeballs (one kid was missing an eye). Lisa showed no remorse for causing my humiliation. She was snickering under her bimbo breath.

On the way home that day, I dreaded giving the note to my mother. I did peek at it and, being a fine reader, I had no problem translating the message. In fact it is seared into my memory to this day, “Dear Mrs. Ryder, Tommy was whispering during quiet time today. Such behavior will not be tolerated in my classroom. Regards, Mrs. Worley.”

To my credit, I didn’t put off the confrontation with my mother. I knew that she was apt to swat me pretty good and send me to my room. Although I feared the punishment, I had come to terms with my impending doom, yet my tears still returned. I handed my mom the note as soon as I came through the door. I waited for the reaction. But her reaction wasn’t what I expected.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” My mom was an ex-elementary school teacher, and she knew well how classrooms operated. “What happened?” she asked.

So, I told her the truth about how Lisa had poked me and I had asked her what she wanted.

“Well, I’m going to give that teacher of yours a piece of my mind!” I remember being so happy to be her son right then. The next day, my mother set up a conference with Mrs. Worley, and I suppose the wrath of mom was on that mean lady. My mother referred to her excitability in such circumstances as “getting her Irish up.”

The second thing that happened that year was really quite funny, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving teacher.

We were sitting as always in the classroom, and Mrs. Worley was going into one of her many long diatribes during the last half hour of the day. She was really getting in to whatever it was she was trying to share with us. I can’t honestly remember the lesson, but it probably related somehow to something to do with her feeble back and rigid back brace. Anyway, time kept ticking away, and Mrs. Worley kept talking right through the time when we were usually getting packed up to go home. Then, we all heard the first dismissal bell ring. Being second graders, that’s the bell we were supposed to go on, but Mrs. Worley kept talking. I honestly believe that we were all too afraid of her to interrupt her to tell her that our bell had rung. Then five minutes later, the second bell rang. There was rustling in the hall as upper grade children all caught their buses. Soon the halls grew quiet, and still Mrs. Worley kept talking. We were all very nervous now, noticeably fidgeting- but much too timid to say anything out loud. Finally, our unusual movements broke in to her trance, and she said, “What on Earth has gotten in to you children?”

Of course Lisa was the one to speak up, “Mrs. Worley the bells have already rung.”

“Oh my goodness children, why didn’t someone say something?” She bolted from the classroom, really testing that new rigid back brace, leaving us alone in the classroom-excited and scared. We began to wonder what would happen if we had missed our buses. Would we be trapped at school all night? Where would we sleep? How would we eat?

A couple of minutes later, Mrs. Worley came back in to the classroom with Mr. Vaughan in tow. Her face was beet red and so was his. I remember him telling the nasty lady right in front of us that it was inexcusable to forget to load the children on the bus. I remember that Mr. Vaughan made Mrs. Worley go down to the office and telephone every mother she could reach to alert them that the children would be late arriving home. Then he ushered us all on to the “substitute bus”- a retired 1940’s model that still chugged along. That was the day that my principal drove me home.

In the final analysis, my second grade year was almost forgettable, yet it remains a powerful memory to me all these years later. Mrs. Worley didn’t last much longer at my elementary school. I have no idea what became of her. I remember thinking 29 years ago when I decided to major in elementary education that the main reason I wanted to become a teacher was to somehow negate that horrible school year. I figured that I could do a better job than that lady, anyone could.