The Thief of Lost Time

Chapter 25 "I Always get an A"

The sixth grade wasn't business as usual. As hard as I tried, I was unable to overcome the teacher's perception that I was no more special than anyone else in the class. Miss Kuesik rarely called on me no matter how high I raised my hand. She never asked me to run special errands. When my first art project earned a C, I was indignant, and, during the mid-morning break for milk and graham crackers, I went to her desk to complain.

I held up my work. "I always get an A in art."

Looking over her glasses, she pointed at the drawing. "What's that?"

"That's a cow." I was mystified that she didn't recognize it.

"Why is its head behind a tree?"

"I couldn't draw the head."

She positioned her glasses farther down her nose so as to see me better. She then pointed to four pictures displayed on the bulletin board. "Those are As and Bs."

Everyone in the class was listening to our conversation, made more enjoyable while eating their snack. All heads turned to inspect the pictures.

She examined my work without saying a word and looked at me again. "Are you saying your work is as good as those?"

Of course, I did, or I wouldn't be standing there.

"You think your work is worth more than a C?"

I didn't care if mine was better or not. I wanted an A. I always got an A. I shrugged.

"It's not." She handed the picture back to me. "You'll have to try harder next time." And then she spoke the cruelest words: "You can't be good at everything."

I slunk back to my desk. I was good at everything. She was too blind to see it.

***

Miss Kuesik was one of a new generation of teachers who began teaching after the war. My former teachers had been unmarried ladies of a certain age. To me, they were old. They wore dresses, black or grey, with high necklines. They used little make-up and permed their hair within an inch of its life. They preferred solid black leather shoes with laces and a medium heel. These 'old lady' shoes,' as Leslie and I called them, looked like they came with a lifetime guarantee. I knew how to charm myself into their good graces.

Instead, Miss Kuesik, young, unmarried, a recent graduate, with no tolerance for a teacher's pet, was immune to the charms of a pre-pubescent boy. At the time, I didn't understand that she judged males as marriage material and not as the son she wished she'd had. She had short, stylish blonde hair. She often checked her lipstick in a pocket mirror.

On the first day of school, I got off on the wrong foot. After the allegiance to the flag, we recited the Lord's Prayer. When Miss Kuesik, a Catholic, reached "but deliver us from evil," she ended with an emphatic "Amen." Some of us continued with "For thine is the kingdom," but we became self-conscious, "the power," more stopped speaking, "and the glory," now only two of us, "forever and ever" and my final squeak "Amen."

Had I earned her disapproval? For the rest of the year, I became a temporary Catholic and adopted the Reader's Digest version of the Lord's Prayer.

***

Every year before Christmas, students in the sixth-grade taped decorations on all the school windows to celebrate the holidays. During the first week of December, the sixth-grade teacher assigned two students each day to decorate windows beginning with those in the first-grade classrooms. Years before, students had cut the decorations from sturdy, white cardboard – a Christmas tree, star, gas lamppost, swag of holly, and eight different carolers. Some singers faced forward and were featureless while others cut in profile had noses and open mouths. The display followed a strict pattern repeating itself around the school.