They say you never forget your first car, your first real job, or your first date. That may be true, but I also never forgot my first significant failure. This happened in
The teacher I remember most is Mrs. Mayer. She was about a thousand years old at the time. A real old school fire-breather. Ex-Nazi prison guard, as I recall. Hands like meat hooks and a voice that chilled one's soul to its core. She brooked no disorder and governed her class firmly. One followed quietly, quickly, and meekly. She was to be obeyed instantly. Questions were not encouraged.
Any mistake was held up for all to see. This action was taken to make sure one never made the same mistake again. Embarrassment at messing up reinforced this method.
The rules were laid down quite simply by our teacher. Sit up straight, keep you feet flat on the floor, don't fidget, and pay attention.
I was not quite the model student. I slouched, my legs and feet played Twister with each other, I fidgeted, and my mind wandered. This is true today, but I have trained myself to pay attention when I must.
We were taking a spelling test, one of the many -- by the hour it seemed -- administered daily. She told us to number our papers from one to ten down the left side. She was specific about this, as she was about all things.
My attention wandered. Big mistake.
I was probably thinking about the next thrilling installment of Lost in Space. Wondering how Will, Dr. Smith, and the robot were going to handle the mountain monster was far more interesting than yet another boring test.
I totally forgot about numbering my paper. I should have kept quiet about it and flown under the radar, as I would now.
Instead, I raised my hand and, when recognized, said, "I forgot to number my paper. What should I do?" Another big mistake.
Mrs. Mayer stopped dead in her tracks. Like a lion that smelled blood in the air, she looked me right in the eyes. I was a goner.
"Didn't you number your paper as I instructed?" she roared.
Her Arctic gale of a voice froze all classroom mumbling in its tracks. Everyone turned in their seats to look at me. The dead kid.
She was making an example of me. She already knew I hadn't numbered my paper, because I asked her what I should do about it.
"No, I didn't," I replied quietly, staring down at my desk.
"Excuse me, but I didn't quite hear you," she said. This from a woman who could hear an empty sandwich baggie hit the cafeteria floor during the hubbub of lunchtime.
"Could you repeat that?" she commanded. She was pouring bleach on the paper cut of my mistake. That was her job.
"Look at me when I'm speaking to you!" she thundered.
I raised my head and looked into those ancient yet intimidating eyes. What I saw there wasn't malice. She was doing her job. I was learning a lesson.
"No, I didn't," I repeated myself very loudly this time. My scratchy prepubescent voice echoed off the lime-green classroom walls.
This was the kid equivalent of, "Yes, sir, may I have another." Think of that scene in the movie "Animal House" where pledges are paddled during hazing.
Nodding, she said, "I see." She was wondering which of the tortures used by the Spanish Inquisition would be a suitable punishment.
After all, I had just publically confessed, twice, to disobeying instructions.
I was SO dead.
In spelling tests like the one we had just taken, the teacher would go over the words you had just spelled out on your paper. You would know what your grade was before you handed your test in.
I looked down and realized that, numbered or not, I had a perfect score. I usually did very well, where spelling was concerned. Math, however, was hell on earth (but that's another story) .
Stupidly, I said, "I got all the words right," hoping to postpone execution.
Mrs. Mayer folded her pudgy arms across her chest and glared at me balefully. "So that entitles you to ignore my instructions? Everyone else managed to number their papers."
Yes, but who else among these idiots got ALL the words right?
To my thinking, the words were all spelled correctly, so who cared about some stupid numbers? I didn't realize then that adherence to policy, procedures, and instructions matters above all else.
Today, smart adults (and sometimes smart children) can skirt the rules and still succeed, but not in early 1970s suburban
"Are you better than everyone else? Do you not have to number your paper?" Teachers loved these arguments.
Of course I'm better than everyone else -- I spelled the words correctly!
Yet I dared not say it aloud. The schoolyard was the ultimate proving ground.
Then the bolt suddenly shot home. I realized the system wouldn't care if I flunked every test I ever took as long as I followed procedure and policy. That included numbering my tests correctly, sitting still, and following the teacher's directions.
"Why didn't you number your paper?" Mrs. Mayer's hammer-on-anvil inquiry brought me back to earth.
I decided to go for broke with a lame explanation and an apology.
Teachers loved apologies.
"I guess I didn't hear you - I was worried about the test - I'm sorry - I'll do better next time - I promise to number the test," I gushed in one long rush of breath.
I shrunk into myself, doing my best Oliver Twist pitiful starving orphan imitation.
The Grand Inquisitor seemed placated.
I learned a lot that day with Mrs. Mayer. I learned it the way I learn everything --The hard way.
Truth was, my attention had wandered. But had I said that, I would have been questioned as to what I was thinking about. Then I would have been asked whether that was really more important than school.
That would have been a very bad question to ask me. To my mind, Lost in Space is STILL more important than many other things. I loved TV. My dad derisively called television the Boob Tube, and me TV Tina. That's a topic for another story.
The question of the unnumbered test remained. The paper we used, as I recall, had no margins. I couldn't use the left margin to squeeze in any numbers.
I had an idea.
"I'll number my test down the right side and do better the next time," I squeaked.
Adults loved when kids promised to do better next time.
"I suppose that will have to do," Mrs. Mayer grunted, satisfied. She swiveled around on her sensible black shoes and resumed her place at the blackboard.
The Grand Inquisitor had turned her back on me. I was excused from the penalty box. Not wishing to re-enter that box, I quickly numbered my paper.
This was decades before the school system decided such actions might damage young psyches. Them was the old days.
The humiliation made me feel lower than a pregnant worm, but it was an effective system. I still remember the lesson I learned that day. My mind never wandered quite as badly again -- at least in the classroom.
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