Today’s Words:
Boise
tusk
Spiderman
jovial
mishmash
tabernacle
hypotenuse

So I was in 6th grade, and my teacher for the year was Miss Conaway. She was 29 or 30. Hot. Long brownish red hair. Dressed smart but not all dolled up. She was “real” as Juli & I would have called her. I was in love. Not since 2nd grade had I fallen so hard for a teacher. In 2nd grade it was Miss Chavez. Who was hot. With long black hair. Gogo boots that came up almost to her knee, skirts that reached to well above the knee. When other women were still wasting far too much fabric to cover themselves, Miss Chavez was economizing.

They had this program back in that day, don’t remember what it was called, but it was referred to with several letters that didn’t spell anything. It was like A.A.P.I. for Academic Achievement Potential Increaser, or somesuch. I think the school system back then liked to just throw shit at walls to see what stuck. I don’t think that program stuck.

AAPI appealed to me because it was very neat. There were these boxes that contained cards. The cards were color-coded. Cards toward the front of the box were green; further back were blue cards; then yellows, reds, oranges, purples. The tasks on the cards got more difficult to achieve as you progressed.

So it was like a contest. I wanted to get through the entire box. I was really fast, and the tasks were pretty easy, so I was half-way through the box after a few weeks. And I felt superior to the kids who were stuck on the greens.

In the middle of all this busy-beaver frenzy, Miss Conaway talked to us about the Civil War, and the abolition of slavery, and abolitionists. I was utterly fascinated that something so heinous had been commonplace, and that it had happened no so very long ago.

She didn’t teach history, she told stories. And she liked to sit on the edge of her desk when she told these amazing stories. She didn’t stand or sit behind the desk like all the other teachers. She made the classroom feel like home

So one day, she has all of us stop doing our color-coded tasks, and she tells us to write a story, taking place during the time of the Civil War. My mind began reviewing the stories she’d told us already, Harriet Tubma, Frederick Douglass, Abe Lincoln; which would I write about? Being task-oriented, I listened for more direction.

She didn’t want a tale she’d already told us. Instead, imagine those times. Close your eyes, and imagine. Then tell what you see. And, here’s what blew my mind, it was okay to make stuff up. I learned that i didn’t have to be a published author in order to write.

I wrote about this soldier who was fighting for the rebels and decided he was against slavery and didn’t want to fight anymore. He escapes from the Army and starts heading home. On his way he meets a woman who works for the underground railroad, and he starts helping her arrange escape routes for slaves to the North.

After that day, history changed for me. When I listened to the stories, I knew I could close my eyes, and embellish on it. Imagine what it was really like.

One thing that didn’t change for me for a long time is that, whenever I imagined people from the past, I imagined them as being very different. They weren’t modern, after all. They couldn’t possibly understand all the things facing modern people. There lives were fundamentally different somehow. I thought they even looked different-and that it wasn’t just the hair and clothing styles. I still notice this tendency when watching a film with a historical setting. I have to catch myself, and go, wow, this was a lesbian in the 19th century. Just like a lesbian today. Only with far fewer choices. But there she was. That coulda been me. Still blows my mind.

Furrow untouched.

Words for tomorrow:

lead astray / castrate / democracy / Medusa / jeaopardy / donkey