Mayn, Andrew
EN101 Prof. Benavidez
18 September 2008
What She Taught Me
In second grade I learned the meaning of the word “appalled” from Ms. McKenzie—I didn’t think so much about it then. I wasn’t phased, either, when Mrs. Donovan threw the dictionary across the room in fifth grade, and, when Mrs. Reed stormed from the classroom in seventh grade I was happy to have a free day. Walking past cornerstones and through the monolithic jaws of high school, however, I noticed that this place changed the teachers and it changed my peers. Or maybe it was just me who changed.
The story of the paper plane, sailing freely across a crowded room, was forgotten by my generation as we were slowly devoured by the social hierarchy and academic rigors of the school. We immediately abandoned the trappings of spit balls and “kick me” signs, forsaking them instead for devices left unmolested by our past selves. Our shields were made of tempered sarcasm and feigned apathy. We wielded camera phones, loud voices and deaf ears and though our insolence was never so bold as that of middle school or elementary school, it was, as I was soon to learn, infinitely more destructive.
High school saw me turn into a loner. I made it a point to sit in the middle of the row closest to the door so my eyes could wander lazily across the room, not so much looking at the board but watching the people who weren’t looking at it. The daydreamers, doodlers, the talkers; they all fascinated me. Behind me I listened to pencils: the incessant whine as they were dragged irreverently across textbook pages or graphite bouncing around in half empty cartridges as they hit the floor. Where the pencils were absent I heard hushed whispers, phones no one dared answer and the restless shuffling of feet, polishing in vain the grimy floor. You see, when you spend enough time by yourself your senses sharpen, so that your mind can find obscure details to cling to, things to satisfy that strange well inside your head that insists you’re actually a part of the world around you. However, in this time of quiet reflection I don’t recall ever hearing the teacher.
That changed one day in November. While we were only a month into the school year the awkward blanket of silence that covered the freshman had long since begun to fray; we had finally begun to realize that high school teachers were not going to be the paragons of discipline we had been told to expect.
