Miss Cook

Or Another Brick in the Wall

A new English teacher in eighth grade entered Miss' life. Young, of course, probably less than ten years older than these junior high students. Miss sensed a free spirit or was it fear?

After the grueling English class of seventh grade, Miss wanted to expand. That seasoned teacher could stand up to the farmers that still came to school. If she was five foot, she firmly remained as teacher with authority. All the rules of English demanded to be followed with the circles and underling of diagramming a sentence. Miss Cook presented something new.

Within a week, Miss' own free spirit approached the sturdy dark gray desk with the windows facing the hill to her house. She rolled down this hill. She snacked on Concord grapes from the arbor on the way home. She fantasized in seventh grade of enticing one of the boy neighbors. They would accidentally meet walking to school and he would be overwhelmed with her long luscious lashes. Alliteration was her friend in junior high.

"I'm so glad you're here," Miss may seem to have a brown nose, but she was fierce in her feelings about people. She told you if she liked you and sure didn't hide it, if she didn't.

"Why, thank you. This seems like a good school to work," Miss Cook returned compliments.

"I was wondering. I hate doing all those diagrams. Could I write stories, instead? And you could tell me if I'm doing them wrong? I just rather string sentences together than write ones not related."

"Hmm, that sounds interesting. We can try it." And she gave the young student a deadline for stories.

Miss wrote up a storm. She loved it. She wrote stories about twenty something women on their own with a divorced dad with emerald salads, so fresh and inviting. No iceberg lettuce for those cosmopolitan women. They were her idols. Maybe Miss Cook looked up to them, as well.

Corrections were minimal. Soon, Miss Cook typed Miss' Last Name Anthology on a folder for Miss to keep her stories, handwritten on school tablet paper. This gave the loopy cursive on both sides of the paper some semblance of professionalism.

Miss Cook created a competition for Halloween for the classes. Miss wrote a psychological thriller about living on a street with a cemetery on the end. Partly autobiographical. Her grandfathers were buried at the end of her street. The small town graveyard did not have any mausoleums. Her grandma's cemetery a block away did in another town. Miss often wandered around it while her parents visited. She walked Grandma's dog. She wondered what those mausoleums looked like inside. The old cemetery had a chapel, too. She used all these elements for the young girl to run into her grandfather as she poked around a mausoleum. Grandfather became angry at being disturbed. He began strangling the heroine, as she pleaded for her life. And then came the cop out ending, the girl fainted, waking up like Dorothy in her bed at home and realizing it was a dream. All on a gray, late October day, the color spraying most days in her area.

Miss walked into the classroom, confident she would win first place. Miss Cook announced another girl's name for her poem, "The Night Before Halloween." A pained look flickered over the teacher's face as she glanced at the second place winner, Miss.

The girl's parody presented clever. Miss felt it lacked originality. She patted herself, that she really won first place, as she didn't like the first place prize and the book of Edgar Allen Poe's stories she received showed it was the first place prize.

So began rejections. Good place to learn in junior high. Miss continued writing. She sensed she didn't want an easy way to success. A teacher in tenth grade gave her her first 'C.' His criticism she needed to write concise. He stared out the window the first day of class. His anger at the education system by claiming we had all been pushed through because we were good boys and girls. That stung, but Miss knew it had a trace of truth.

One day, he gave awards to the most successful skaters in the class. Miss won her second runner up award. No book of a famous author's stories this time. Only a piece of paper not to hang on her wall or even show her parents, who contributed to "the good girls succeed; nice girls win" world view. And of course, work hard enough. She missed that when she didn't know what the hard work was.

Miss determined to find out. What does it take to succeed? She already gave up on professional writing as a career. She chose the sure thing, the secure future of being a nurse. In the seventies recession, blah future, the steel mills declining and glut of teachers, it certainly was a safe decision. Maybe she still didn't want to work hard.

By her senior year, having an epiphany the end of her junior year, she left high school behind, if only in her mind. She was moving on. Someone told her college friends were the ones who lasted. You lived with them. You experienced more life with them. So, foolishly, she shed these childhood friends as she eyed the future.

She still had her friends. But she left drinking behind. She read to learn, not just to get a grade.She pushed herself in the books she chose. She wanted more. She floundered but felt sure. She already said good bye.