pigeon

I keep screwing up my e’s!

Third grade. No — what grade did we learn cursive in? I don’t remember, it was probably earlier than third. But third is the grade I remember most from elementary school because of Mrs. Englemann. Engelmann? She appears elsewhere in the pigeon pantheon.

We were in class in our rigid non-progressive traditional we-didn’t-know-anything-else rows of seats. That reminds me of an interview I had one time for a job I didn’t get. Another time.

Practicing writing. Not like writing a story or whatever, but literally just writing. Funny how one verb can mean so many different things. This is why I think it was third grade: that was the one grade (up until midway through 10th anyway) when I was outgoing and even boisterous at times. I guess that checks out, even by today’s standards — isn’t it around fourth grade when the self-consciousness sets in, the cliques, the coolness? Seems like it was right around there for my kids, anyway. But in third grade I could be a dork about, say, mastering my multiplication tables — getting that paper back with the 💯 on it, and literally standing up and shouting in triumph! No way would I ever have done that in middle school, high school. College — no, still not really. Grad school? Maybe. Funny how long it takes to come full circle sometimes.

Also circles are not just circles but usually something a little eccentric — like a cursive o or e. Or a spiral. Or something else with even more dimensions, some perhaps curled inside others.

So we were methodically writing our letterforms like so many medieval scribes on our wide-ruled parchments, and — you know how when you’re building something with legos and you’re doing it with someone you’re very comfortable with, and you kind of just make intermittent prattle, mostly brainless chatter? Beyond the occasional “I need a flat blue skinny four-piece” or whatever, I mean just random utterances about nothing in particular, like verbal clouds floating past in the clear blue sky of pure geometrical possibility? This is how remarkably (for me) comfortable I was for that one, brief, bright year of school — I did that in class. Looking back over my work so far, I noticed that a certain vowel didn’t consistently have the effortless loopiness that I wanted it to have, and I said out loud, “I keep screwing up my e’s!”

I guess being one of two Democratic families in my whole elementary school might have had something to do with it, but apparently other kids had very different linguistic codes of behavior than I did. You should have heard the gasps and giggles and admonishmnents that billowed up out of that grid of sweaty little humans at their desks. Huh? What? Me genuinely looking around, like, what are you all on about? Finally realizing they were aghast that I would say the (apparently) forbidden word screwing in school! Quelle horreur!

Mrs. Engelmann contained her amusement in a not unfriendly smirk, and chided me in the very gentlest way possible; I don’t remember the words but I remember the effect, which is to say it wasn’t lasting, and this is how I know it was gentle; because if it had been even the remotest bit shaming, I would have seethed and burned and regretted for, let’s be honest, years.

She was a good teacher. The finest kind. Old school, firm, flamboyant, fair. My mom said she saw her recently, and she ... remembered me! As Mr. Vonnegut would have said, if that isn’t nice, what is?

Speaking of full circle, I can’t write cursive worth a crap (another bad word!!) anymore, if I ever could. But that’s OK, because we can type now. I guess some people don’t even want to do that, would rather copy and paste, or generate. Whatever. Find your sweet spot and enjoy it while you can.