MY 7th GRADE TEACHER

7-31-09...MY 7th. GRADE TEACHER

I was talking with my friend Tommy Shirley yesterday and he mentioned our 7th. Grade Teacher Miss. Hamilton. I had almost forgotten that woman completely but when Tommy brought her up I remembered some things that I didn't like about her at all. That's the way it goes. We all remember things and events differently. Some of the things he mentioned I don't remember at all, but just bringing her up got my memory working on the things I do remember.
Miss Hamilton was tall and snooty. She seemed to think the world was a better place just because she was there. She also thought our little country school was not good enough for her expert talents. And besides that we were not even close to being what she wanted in her students. To her we were just a bunch of hillbillies with no concept of learning the finer things in life.
Miss Hamilton's hair was done up in a style that to me now was very much like a wig. A big tidy lump on back of her head right down by her neck. Now that I look back I am more positive that it was a hair piece. Yep! I can almost see her now standing in front of her mirror pinning that monstrosity on the back of her proper neck.
Now we had just come up from our little white Grade school to the big brick building across the road and I felt inept enough already so when she started her snotty looking down her nose at us it was hard for me to take. She thought we had no manners or 'social graces' as she often said to the girls. We needed to be proper ladies. We Arkies didn't measure up to her Mississippi standards. I pointed out to her one day that Mississippi was farther South than Arkansas so I figured that made me better than her. Well that thinking didn't jive with her. Heck fire no.
She started trying to teach us how to be graceful. How to walk, speak, and “Carry Yourselves like Ladies” she said. Well we just weren't having none of that. Nope! To heck with that old bag.
I was born with scoliosis of the back which is a curving of the spine. Therefore my back was not straight. Never was, still aint, never will be. That's just the way it is period, end of story. She wasn't even listening to my excuses she said. I was just a slouch and needed to learn how to hold my shoulders back.
She would make me stand against a wall and she would push my shoulders back and try to straighten them. That was impossible. She would get me during my free time and push my shoulders back against the wall and hold me there for what seemed like a long time to me because it hurt. She just kept telling me I had to train my body to not slouch.
I went home one evening and told my parents that my back was hurting bad. Mama looked at my back and found bruises and finger prints on my shoulders. “Clydene have you been fighting” she asked. “No Mama I never fight” I said. Well more questions and more answers until My Parents figured out what was going on.
The next morning I didn't ride the bus but my Daddy took me in his car. He was mad and I mean madder'n'a hornet! I didn't really know what he was going to do but he told me to go about what I usually did that he was going to talk to the Superintendent. Miss Hamilton quit the trying to straighten my back and she even told me she was sorry. Her face looked like she had just eaten a green persimmon and then tried to eat a lemon as she said I'm sorry. I knew she didn't really mean it. I still don't know what Daddy said to anyone but I do know he was steaming for some time to come. I had to go to the Dr. but don't even remember what he said.
Then came the next thing this woman did. My Grandma who was living with us had lived through the bad depression of the 30s When my Mama was growing up food was scarce . Money was even more scarce. Even if you had money you had to use what was the food stamps of the time to buy things. The way I understood it each Family got a book of these food stamps. They were for whatever they bought but they couldn't buy everything and the stamps didn't pay for the food. Each stamp was marked with, coffee, sugar, flour, and etc. If you had money and wanted a can of coffee for example, you had to have so many coffee stamps to buy it. No stamps, no coffee, even if you had money. Grandma had some of these stamps in her possession. They were not worth anything then. I had seen them and for some reason I told Miss Hamilton that Grandma had them. She asked me to bring them to school. She was so interested in seeing them that I asked Grandma if I could take them to School.
When I showed them to Miss Hamilton she wanted to take them and show her husband so I let her. I never saw them again. Grandma never asked me about them and I forgot all about them. We didn't know they might be valuable but Miss Hamilton did. Years and Years later I thought about that and I realized that old bag same as stole them from me. My family might never have know that many years later those stamps would become collectors items and be very valuable. In fact they might have been just thrown out in the trash. But knowing that Teaches who thought she was so much better than us had stooped that low is a revelation to me. She was a terrible person. I thought so then and now I am very sure of it. I have never stolen a thing in my life and never will. So to my thinking that makes me a better person than she was. Yep! She is probably not even alive now but I just wonder if she ever once thought about that little school again and the way she treated a bunch of kids she was supposed to be teaching History. I doubt it very much. Yep, I really doubt it!!!!