Not all abuse is physical. Some is the result of psychological warfare. For 42 years, I seemed to be receiving coded messages that something was wrong. They came from seemingly likable billboard ads, pop songs and TV comedy skits. The queasiness, t...
As an education beat reporter in the mid-1980s, I learned of a new focus on accommodating multiple learning styles, particularly in math and science. Some elementary school students grasp fractions better with written numbers, others by handling 3-D objects, still others with beakers of liquid.
I knew of a teacher who was 20 years ahead of this trend, though until recently, I had forgotten about the clever way Miss Briggs taught our class about the meaning of the "greater than" and "less than" symbols, known to math students as > and <.
She asked a big brawny student named Jim to stand in front of the rest of the class. He was a rough-hewn, often flannel shirt clad, but clean cut kid with a deep voice which reminded me of the tough guy character "Bluto" on Popeye cartoons.
The teacher then asked me to stand about five feet away from Jim. I did, then she placed a large ">" sign between us, explaining, "You would say: 'Jim is greater than Scott.' "
I was no random choice as this visual aide. It seems there was no determination > Gloria Briggs' determination to belittle me.
As for Jim, I remember him as always being friendly to me, though he could come across as intimidating by merely standing next to a classmate, or uttering a syllable with his adult-sounding voice.
On the playground, Jim was rousing and loud during the recess softball games, and he would spike the square ball off the concrete with the force to send it to the stratosphere, but he played fair; he never hurt or threatened anyone.
This young man was blue collar in every way, but his generation's upcoming challenge of coping with the loss of blue collar jobs tragically became moot for him; Jim died in 1976.
The following year, I was told he had been working at a landscaping job when the riding mower he was operating overturned.
Jim survived, but lost an arm in the accident.
The acquaintance who informed me of this said Jim became devoutly religious and gentle in temperament after the mishap, then died about a year later.
RIP Jim. That math stunt wasn't your doing; you knew how to handle that greater stature of yours without making anyone else feel lesser.
The anecdote of the two students and the > symbol is one of a handful of blunt, strictly real-world transgressions by Miss Briggs which have recently come back into clear memory. These lacked any false aura of being ethereal or otherworldly, and that is further helping me get past magical thinking.
Days before the 4th Grade began, I had returned from a trip out west to visit my father. His Rocky Mountain region venue was exotic compared to our settled, rather conventional area. I had brought to school a favorite photograph of myself out there during the summer to show to a couple of classmates.
I had unknowingly dropped it behind the bulletin board where we hung our coats, and when I went at day's end to get my wrap and leave for home, there was Miss Briggs bending down to return it to me, wearing a smile (though a sarcastic one, as usual when dealing with me).
In a tone blending feathery affection with causticness, she giggled and remarked something like, "well look at you!" pointing at the skinny boy barelegged in the southwestern sun.
I forced a brave smile, wondering whether I could possibly be missing an iota of sincerity in her gesture.
On another day, when she again spoke in that tone, I held no such doubt that I was being denigrated.
During a silent reading time, my attention shifted to a distant jet barely visible out the window; that's how I had traveled on the previous summer's vacation, so nostalgia for those western venues could have been stoking wanderlust on this humdrum afternoon.
But shortly I was reminded I had something to want to fly away from, not just to: Miss Briggs suddenly was bending down at my right, and with that same mocking smile, she looked me in the eye and in that manner appropriate for communicating with an infant said: "Air-o-plane!"
Whether or not pushed on by that obnoxious intrusion, the airplane (pronounced with two syllables, please) to me became a symbol of escape.
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My last sensory memory before being placed in Miss Briggs' clutches was the verve of air travel, connecting through some of the nation's busiest airports heading to and from our father's home late in the summer.
And since the school year began, each morning in our home before departing for the horrors of that classroom, I'd hear an energetic musical ad playing on a radio in our kitchen Mom would switch on to help get her children moving in the pre-dawn.
"Delta is ready when you are!" the pulsing lyrics would repeat. The arrangement was intended to get listeners to blend their own immediate wants with the big airline's name. It was about being at your beck and call for next month's vacation or next week's business trip. It's always enticing to think of dropping everything and escaping to cosmopolitan excitement. But for a nine-year-old boy far from the ad's target audience, those words each morning suggested bolting from an impossible situation. Right now. It would have been justifiable hooky. Their planes were ready. And I certainly was.
Because of that association, the Delta ad's lyrics still have the effect of luring me to a freer life. Just don't add any extra syllables to the word "airplane," or the trip is off.
