STOP THAT, MISS BRIGGS!

Barbara Rinkoff, You Read My Mind

The lyrical reference to a "little boy who caught my eye" presents a competing theory for why Miss Briggs played mind games with me. This one isn't about me the helpless target of a conspiracy to force feed me bad tasting medicine, but me having some kind of hold on Miss Briggs, with her the ill one.

One thing today's tense world mandates I say -- forget about the word "pedophile." That, she was not. What was motivating her to pay this extra and bizarre attention to me, despite my theories, was a mystery.

I don't recall myself and Miss Briggs ever being the only two people in the classroom, but I vividly remember a literary passage in a children's book published that year about a similar, if reversed situation.

There in Miss Briggs' room, I read "Elbert the Mind Reader," by Barbara Rinkoff. I had bought it in class through a nationwide book club in which students periodically ordered books. The club then delivered our choices right to our classrooms.

Elbert, a boy about my age and similarly uncertain in his abilities, finds that a filling his dentist puts in his tooth goes well beyond that rare side effect of bringing in radio broadcasts. It lets him read minds!

Listening in on his classmates' thoughts is irresistible, and it makes it harder for Elbert to follow what the teacher, Mrs. McGovern, is saying. For his apparent failure to pay attention during a history lesson, Elbert is ordered to stay after class.

With just Elbert and Mrs. McGovern in the room, he reads her mind – and close to 50 years later, I have not forgotten these first two words she thinks:

"Peculiar boy."

The rest I recently archived online. Mrs. McGovern, wondering why lately Elbert can't focus on his lessons, continued thinking: "...always seemed so sensible, and now...

"Look at him sitting there. You'd think that he had the brains to apologize instead of waiting for me to reprimand him again."

Elbert's hand then shot up and after she called on him, he said solemnly, "I'd like to apologize for not paying attention in class today."

The teacher accepted, reminded him to "keep your thoughts tuned in to class," then said, "You can go now."

The book then says Elbert eagerly left the room thinking how the teacher had no idea how right she was about "tuning in" being an issue. Then he, "escaped into the afternoon sunlight," Rinkoff wrote.

Oh yes, I identified with that scene. Positioned in front of Miss Briggs about where Elbert was in relation to Mrs. McGovern, I read it in the similar silence of a room full of students poring over our newly arrived books.

So quiet was the room that I could have tuned into Miss Briggs' thoughts, except that I had not yet received any dental fillings, much less an extra sensory one.

Oh Elbert, you lucky kid! I'd give anything to be able to read the thoughts of the teacher right in front of me at this moment and maybe figure out why she does what she does.

And that word, "escape!" Barbara Rinkoff had no idea how tuned in to me her book was. Rinkoff had been a social worker in New York City before writing youth literature ranging from fun and illustrative stories like Elbert's to educational books about nature and human communication.

I had hoped to contact her with thanks for how "Elbert The Mind Reader" helped me through a difficult experience, but I was saddened to read that Barbara Rinkoff died in 1975 in her early 50s.

I would have told her that I did not know why among her entire book, the words "peculiar boy" stayed with me over five decades. 

Perhaps it is because  Miss Briggs' weird behavior led me to wonder if she could read my  thoughts.

If she could, I'm sure she heard the words, "Peculiar woman."