Third Grade Problems & Solutions

Anya has a new drawing book that I found on the dining room table over the weekend.  It sucked me backwards down the corridor of time to the third grade.  My teacher was an irritable old lady and everyone dreaded getting her class.  This was felt all the more keenly by the fact that the other third grade teacher was so nice.  

She was constantly on me for moving too much or talking too much.  Her way of handling it was so heavy-handed that my Mom and the Principal had to get involved.  There was a meeting of some kind (my memory is clouded by the intervening decades) but I seem to recall the Principal asking me what it was I enjoyed doing in my free time.

I told him I liked to draw.  His answer to the quandary was to have my teacher let me go to the library and find some drawing books to work on when my work was done so that I was not just sitting there getting into “trouble.”  It required some bending on the teacher’s part who expected kids to sit quietly at their desks when they were done with their work and do nothing, like cute little robots in pause mode.  She protested that she would have to let other kids do that too.  The Principal came back with “We’re not talking about other kids.  We’re talking about Aaron.”  My Mom told me she could tell that really got the teacher’s goat and the discussion ended there.    

I learned later that that was her last year to teach and no one else had to sit under her constant scowl after me.  I took credit for being the person who helped her decide it was time to retire.

And here is Anya’s drawing book with pretty much the exact same animals and how to draw them.  For years I had a drawing of a dolphin and shark in the ocean mounted on a sheet of blue construction paper stored away from this time period, but it was lost at some point and forgotten, until now.

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