First Grade

I remember being very nervous and afraid my first day of school. Funny, I don’t remember having that same problem in early Sunday school classes or in kindergarten. But in first grade, I cried when my mother left me at the door of the classroom. Not a lot, but I remember tearing up. Thankfully, I didn’t make a scene.

I definitely remember one pudgy little red-headed boy whose name was James. James didn’t just cry when his mother left him. He struggled. He screamed. He held onto his mother’s skirts and sobbed for all he was worth. He carried this demonstration on for so long that he finally had to be physically restrained by the first grade teacher, Mrs. Langston, while his poor mother made good her escape. From that point on, James was a marked boy. He was the butt of all jokes, and this torment continued on for years.

Public school lesson Number One: don’t show your vulnerabilities to your classmates or they will persecute you unmercifully for the rest of your days.

I didn’t particularly like first grade. I didn’t particularly like Mrs. Langston. It was very hot in our room. Imagine going to school in Houston, Texas in 1963 with no air conditioning. It was hard to pay attention to anything the teacher was saying with the sultry humidity steaming in through the windows and the cicadas singing us to sleep in the trees outside. I seem to remember being thirsty all the time. I can remember raising my hand and asking permission to go to the water fountain again and again, but Mrs. Langston would always say no. I have a very clear mental picture of her standing over me one day with tiny drops of sweat beading on her hairy upper lip telling me to sit down and be quiet! Nope, not my favorite teacher.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first learned how to read, but I’m fairly certain it was not in the first grade. Mrs. Langston used to sit us in a large circle and hold up flash cards printed with words like “cat” and “dog” and “coat”. She would hold up the card, say the word, and we would all repeat it—just like a group of parrots. It was rote memorization, and it was very ineffective. I do remember being able to read my Highlights magazine at an early age. I remember reading The Timbertoes, so perhaps my mother helped me to learn to read.

I don’t remember doing any math that year either, although I have a vague recollection of her holding up apples and oranges. So much for first grade academics.

I do remember painting. Not long after school started, she sat a large easel up in a corner of the classroom. One by one we each got a turn to spend an hour painting our very own picture, which was then displayed along one wall on a clothes line, each picture held in place with wooden clothes pins. I remember waiting and waiting and waiting for my turn to come. Finally I got my chance at the paints. I painted a landscape. There was green grass and a large tree and lots of blue sky and a big yellow sun in the upper corner. I remember standing at the easel and thinking to myself, “If the sun is shining down on everything, and the sun is yellow, then I should cover the entire sky and all the earth with yellow paint as well.”

Well, no one had ever told me that yellow and blue make green. As I began to spread that cheery yellow paint across my canvas, all my beautiful blue sky turned green and the colors all began to bleed and run into one another. I was very surprised, but kept on spreading yellow sunshine, thinking that artistically, I just had to be correct. Mrs. Langston came over and said, in a very disgusted voice, “Just look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined your painting. Go sit down.” And she hung my painting up at the very far end of the clothes line, in a position of great disgrace.

I never picked up a paintbrush again.

The one bright spot I do remember from first grade is that I met my best friend, Martha Ann, there. She and I were best friends from 1st through 6th grade. Our class used to travel in pairs, and she and I were always buddies. We used to hold hands as we walked in rows, two by two, down the long hall to the school lunch room. We played together on the playground, were in Brownies together after school, and we had sleepovers at each other’s house and told each other all our secrets, then “pinkie swore” to be best friends forever.

So, first grade passed by like a 9-month prison sentence for me. About all I remember is physical discomfort, a lack of mental stimulation, and a great fear of the teacher. After such a poor start, it's amazing to me that I ever liked school at all, but then second grade was just around the corner. . . .