Take off your hat, I want to stand up.

Chapter 6: Hey, where did Miss Kuskie go?

 Chapter six: Where did Miss Kuskie go?

Hey, would some adult tell me where Miss Kuskie went?

Miss Kuskie was the joy, smiles and all, to me and our kindergarten class. We acted as if we adored her and we did. She was a beautiful person and the best teacher I ever had. There was peace, contentment, calm and true love in my wee heart, for her. One day short of three months we set about shuffling into the classroom, our routine and expectations had been well established we were like punch card longshoremen getting in another day's work for the man, something was not right. Kids and animals, not cats, they are we too cool to notice, develop a sixth sense of correct order, the person greeting us at the door was not our teacher, Miss Kuskie. It was a substitute, the Principal and two quietly subdued parents, Ross Frazier' s and the other Ross's mom, odd. We found out later Miss Kuskie was let go. What? Why? How? We did not find out. I kept at it and I found out six and a half years later the administration fired her for being pregnant and being a Miss. Truly she was hacked to death by the white hairs sitting in a board room some where, the cowards. My sense of injustice was sharpened on the tines of this dilemma. I wanted to be a lawyer from that moment. I wanted to stand up for the little guy that got his butt kicked by some process, and had their lives ruined because of appearances, or worse, rumour.

Miss Kuskie we still love you. We miss you like there is no tomorrow, we hope your life was a creation of your design. We all hoped you did not let the bureaucrats win with their shirt tale thinking and knee jerk reaction to a human condition, pregnancy, really?

Who was in charge?

There should be a shout out, a day, a parade for all of the silent suffering good people who have been crushed by the system they serve. We are rule followers, when the rules change and the dynamics start to run off the rails, good people get rolled over because of changing social constructs. The system is nameless, faceless and has no reason for being, other than propping up its own agenda. Sometimes the system fails, it failed for us when our teacher, Miss Kuskie was stripped of her dignity, and so it goes. No parades, no apologizes, no sense, no way, no how, we were timid in our constrained silence, in a sense we were part of the system, we let her down.

If you are thinking there is a situation you have in the back of your mind where the injustices of the social order have crushed a personal spirit. Please,take a second, close your eyes, picture that person, make it right, forgive them as well as others, then move on. Sometimes it just makes you angry, plain and simple.

My dad would say, do not worry. Worry is the thief of time and space. We usually cannot do a single thing to go back in time and correct the event. That time is gone. It is in the past. So he would add, do not look behind you, you' re not going that way.

Secondly, no one can predict the future. You only have, now. Each of us should make the best of the situation you are in today, improve, go forward, try to do better with no regrets. This advise is good down home meat and potatoes common sense hillbilly advise. It is like, eat, it if it tastes bad, spit it out, do not continue eating. Come to think about it we used to eat dirt. We tried it, found the taste not too bad, but the grit left something to be desired, so we stopped eating dirt. No one had to tell us not to eat dirt. We learned these life lesson on our own through experience. I have found experience to be the best teacher.

Live your life like you mean it, everything will turn out for the best, as Grandpa Blair would postulate, then he would usually go back to sleep on the couch. Good old Grandpa Blair, he was a grade eight educated self taught genuine human being with common values and a good heart. Love the man.

We did not forget our favourite teacher, our kindergarten teacher Miss Kuskie. From all of us we hope you found a good path for your life.