MamaLu’s Last Class

She would not be credited with any particular saying. No one took any mementos from her classroom after her last class. I don’t think anyone’s brought her up in the decades since. 

I remember her iconically. She is fully integrated in my origin story, the agent of my second rebellion.  (The first was spanking myself in response to my mother’s threats when I was three, causing her to laugh too hard to actually do it.)

I’ve never had a time with more successes and accolades than my eighth grade year. Marilla and I got out of science just for being bored and raised spider plants for sale in the school’s greenhouse. Music, spelling bee, orchestra.

The basketball team was terrible but it wasn’t because of me. “God, B, give the ball to somebody else for a change.” (Yes, Bimbette, I’ll do that. We’ll lose again but at least no one’s feelings will be hurt. Everyone will get to feel like they played a part in how bad we suck. And no one will get more than their fair share of points.)

In MamaLu’s class I found out I could be funny. Funny enough to make people laugh. At MamaLu.

Not for anything mean. I was raised right, and besides, to me, she was every old lady. Round, in a dress that looked like draperies. 

But my mother had taught English. My mother had taught me English. So I knew it could be done a lot better. And then MamaLu did the thing some teachers do. That Bimbette did at the game. She asked me to stop raising my hand. Let someone else have their shot. 

So I stopped raising my hand. I just didn’t stop saying whatever popped into my head. Questions, puns, hilarious rejoinders, very tangential associations. Not in any way that would get me booted, no more than once or twice a day, only when MamaLu was doing the talking. 

We were to be the last class not just of the day, but the year. The last year of her teaching career. The last English class she would teach in her life. I didn’t wonder what she would do with herself when she retired;  I don’t even know if she was married, had kids, wanted to travel, anything.

But we were gonna be - I was gonna be - memorable. She was gonna end glad to be done. 

One day, she had us read some Thurber story.  Her brilliant lesson plan: Read quietly to yourself. Write down any words that are new to you. Look them up. Write down the definitions.

I read the story. Read some other stuff. Got up and sharpened my pencil. I still hafta sharpen a pencil nearly every day. It’s a great way just to take a little break, check out what everybody’s wearing. It’s easier to see out the windows when you’re standing up.

I sat back down. We were about two thirds of the way through our 40 minute period. 

We sat alphabetically, so as a B I was near the back of the row closest to the door. She liked to start collecting the papers from alternating sides of the room, so no one routinely got an extra minute to finish. Experience shows.

She got to the front of our row and told us to pass our papers up.

Full eye contact, making sure to use my name so all these people who think I’m so funny  will know that I have messed up. “Where’s your paper?”

“There weren’t any new words.”

“No new words. I don’t believe that. What are ‘masculine proclivities’?”

“Tendencies associated with masculinity. Manliness.”

She gave an exaggerated sigh. I think she might have mentally stomped her foot.

“Well, you have to turn something in.”

I wrote my name and the date in whatever corner it was supposed to be in and passed it forward. The bell rang.

She handed our papers back the next day, coming from behind. There’s my blank page with a big ‘F’ on it. No exaggeration, it was at least 1 1/2 inches tall in fat red marker on the top of the page.

I’m sure she thought I’d be appalled, and I was. I knew a person shouldn’t get an F for not pretending not to know things. I knew I should never lie for a grade. 

I was raised by a teacher.

MamaLu did not foresee the double down. We were getting near the end of the year now.

Basketball was over. I had a date for the dance. I’d won the spelling bee. My dad was back. I was giving the speech.

Still with the book reports, though.

Everyone knows the purpose of a book report is to impose the illusion of reading, in a way that ruins it forever, on people who didn’t like it to start with.

It’s only an unintended consequence that it turns reading into drudgery for people who like it too.  Because now you have to expose and dissect that story you were just inside for someone who wasn’t there and just wants you to check all the boxes.

And let’s not forget that with eighth grade came feelings - including the feeling of not being “in the mood” for something that one used to just do. The pressure to produce a book report suddenly rendered me unable to choose a book that interested me enough to read it, or even fake it.

The deadline was looming. Despite my simmering attraction to rebellion, not turning in a book report was not an option. That’s not how things were done in my world in 1977.

I’d read hundreds of books. I could’ve barfed up a book report on any of them in twenty minutes. But I was annoyed there wasn’t a book I wanted to read. 

I wrote a song in a dream once. Wrote it live, improv style, on stage. It was fantastic. It was an outdoor show, some beer garden. The crowd loved it. Woke up, of course, and it was gone.

The same thing happened to the book, but not before I got the book report turned in.  I called it Dandelion Lane, gave the author a name and a one-line bio, included some version of whatever data was typically required. I summarized the plot, making sure to convey a sense of the characters and identify a theme or two. I might’ve even drawn a picture of the cover. Neat and properly formatted. I’d done it all in a couple of the most enjoyable hours I’d ever spent on schoolwork.

I got the A, but wasn’t surprised when MamaLu asked me to stop by her desk as class ended.

“It’s an excellent book report”, she said. “Obviously, the kind of work I expect from you. The thing is, it made me want to read the book, since I’d never heard of it before. You’ve got to imagine after all these years I’ve heard of most all the books!” She was laughing, and I was thinking, my mom’s got some books I’ll bet you haven’t heard of, the ones she’d put in the hallway bookcase around the time her girls hit double digit ages.

“The library didn’t have it. I asked Mrs. Austin, and she didn’t seem to know it either.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know anything about that. See, my grandmother has an apartment on the third floor of her house only no one lives up there. But there’s still a refrigerator, and it’s full of books. And that’s where I found it.”

“I see. Does your grandmother live nearby?”

“Oh, no, she lives in Ohio, where I was born. We just visit a lot.”

“Well that’s nice. It also made me think of Dandelion Wine; that’s been a very popular book with a lot of your friends this year.”

“Oh yeah”, I’m rolling with this now, “the Ray Bradbury book, yeah, James read it and wanted me to read it but I didn’t think I’d like it.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz I don’t like the stuff James likes. You know, science fiction. This is more of a love story.”

“Well, I’d very much like to read it. You made it sound quite enticing.” Her smile was wide, but a little tentative. I wonder if she’d expected me to confess. 

“Will you bring it in?”

“Sure, if I can remember. Lots going on getting ready for graduation and everything.”

She might’ve asked me about it once or twice more. 

I’d had more fun making up that book than I’d ever had practicing the dictionary.  

And I had escaped her clutches; I hadn’t compromised. 

I hope at least I made her feel better about retiring.