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I close my eyes; I'm back there banging fat felt eraser blocks together
making chock dust clouds slide down the slanted rays of sunshine coming
through the open window on this golden afternoon the first week of 3rd
grade. I try not to breathe that fuzzy stuff in, but it doesn't really
matter because I am elated with my elevated position. I feel special.
Close my eyes again to travel back even further; I smell the suffocating
odor of steaming hot wool as the nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital wrapped
my paralyzed limbs in these cooked blankets rather than let me start 2nd
grade with my friends. Hot packs they were called; the doctors said if
I was a good girl and let them wrap me up as though I were a sausage several
times a day I might someday wiggle my toes again. Well, did I have a choice?
I was a good girl, but try as I might, not one of the ten moved. But that
didn't really matter because I wasn't in an iron lung like some of the
kids - I could breathe on my own. (Jonas Salk's miracle was yet to come.)
Everyone knows by the time they're in 3rd grade that it's teacher's pet
who has the honor of cleaning the erasers, wiping down the blackboard,
and replacing stubs with fresh, long white pieces of chock that felt amazingly
smooth as your fingers slid lightly over their cool hardness as you placed
them neatly in the chock tray. Mrs. Conroy smiled at me as she arranged
the pages of each student's best cursive writing on the bulletin boards
flanking both sides of the clean blackboard. We had everything in place
for tomorrow. It would be a great day. And I was, indeed, a good girl
who had learned the hard way to wiggle her toes a few months ago with
the encouragement of the physical therapy heroes.
It's tomorrow. It's recess. I'm standing at the bottom of the high slide
on my trusty crutches because my friend is climbing the scary stairs to
the top so she can make the exhilarating glide down and land triumphantly
at my feet. We will both giggle at the fun of it all. Just before my friend's
turn to slide down, the boy who was climbing the stairs ahead of her stopped
at the top and hollered for everyone on the playground to watch him. As
we all watched expectantly, he dug deep, with both hands, into the pockets
of his blue jeans. Next thing I knew rocks were careening pell-mell down
that high slide at me. I was the target. I was an easy mark, since I hadn't
yet mastered the art of nimble crutching. Above the cries of my friend
waiting to come down to me, he yelled out, "That's what she gets.
She's fat and crippled and retarded and has rocks in her head." There
was a lot of laughter.
I eventually learned to walk well - no braces, no crutches, post-polio
syndrome in check. Hurray! I'm special. "Sticks and stones can break
my bones, but names can never hurt me." I only think about that grade
school high slide incident every ten years or so when something or someone
reminds me how mean a few bullies can be. Mostly, I have nothing but positive
memories of precious school days - mine and those of my three children.
August meant back to school shopping with my kids and was something I
loved - or think I loved. "Do you really have to have a new backpack,
what's wrong with last year's pink one?" "Mom, I need eye shadow,
all my friends are wearing it." "A car. Are you nuts?"
New clothes that don't look new, fresh books that I hope they'll crack,
magic markers that smell like fun, binder covers beckoning to be graffitied,
and ruled paper awaiting critical thoughts, poems, problems, images, and
answers to questions. Now it's whiteboards and rainbow colored markers
and too much home work. My ‘baby' in tears, "That crappy girl
in the popular group stuck her foot out so I'd trip and fall down in front
of the entire math class. Everyone laughed."
Rock-Paper-Scissors.
You can buy Lynn Cook Henrikson's book(s) here at
http://www.booksbywomenforwomen.com
and access other free articles in our archive; and in addition, find out
more about some of our other amazing authors.
Lynn Henriksen discovered a profound way to capture the character of
our mothers and other significant people to keep their spirits alive.
She has helped hundreds capture in brief memoirs the memories and feelings
they never thought they could record. Her “how to” book, Give
the Gift of Story: TellTale Souls’ Essential Guide to Tap Memory
and Write Memoir in Five Acts, is easy-to-follow and filled with tips,
examples, exercises, and sage advice for memoirists and storytellers alike.
Lynn, aka The Story Woman™, holds Story Salons and gives workshops,
events, and classes to Tap Memory & Write Memoir: Give the Gift of
Story. Her second book, TellTale Souls: Keeping Spirits Alive One Memoir
at a Time, is filled with 50 short, true tales capturing the character
of mothers from diverse walks of life. The manuscript is presently in
the hands of her agent, who is seeking a publisher.
Lynn is the President of the San Francisco Chapter of the Women’s
National Book Association, an organization with ten chapters and over
800 members. An alumna of Dominican University and a member of the Psi
Chi Chapter of the National Honor Society in Psychology, her career has
been rich and varied as an entrepreneur, business woman, founder of a
non-profit institute, neuro-feedback (brainwave) therapist, writing instructor,
and project manager for the renovation of historic hotel properties. She
is the mother of a son and two daughters, the proud grandmother of two
“adorables,” and she lives with her husband in Marin County,
overlooking San Francisco Bay. www.telltalesouls.com/blog
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