3-21-70

     “That’s only the second mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”

     It was my stock response when the kids in class delightedly pointed out a mistake I had made either on a handout or something I had chalked on the board.

     “What was the first one?” 

       I removed the plain silver band from my left ring finger, held it up to the light and read the inscription, “3-21-70.”  They laughed.  I laughed.  But down the hall, someone was not laughing.

     My classroom wasn’t Las Vegas.  What happened there didn’t stay there, I found out.

     One of the few in-services that I remember was a standup comedian who entertained the faculty from a dozen or more schools at a “Collaborative In-Service”.  Many of the schools in the area combined their resources and hired a high-powered consultant to come enhance our abilities to educate.  One time the great guru Madeline Hunter spent six hours sharing with us strategies for dignifying incorrect answers that students might give in the course of a class discussion.

     The standup comedian humorously stereotyped the various faculty members in the typical school.  I remember two of his descriptions, the shop teacher who was on the bottom rung of the faculty social ladder, who may not have dressed very well to come to work, for you never saw his “school” clothes because he always wore white coveralls to class.

     On the other end of the spectrum was the home-ec teacher.  She would always be so well coiffured and dressed that she resembled an iced cupcake or an ice cream cone.  Like a small boy who can’t resist sampling the icing, you wanted to leave a small imperfection on the home-ec teacher’s appearance.  She was the purveyor of good manners, the one whose frown let you know you had trespassed with some form of bad taste.

     It was funny because the stereotype was so accurate.  I don’t remember what he said about English teachers, or math, science, or social studies teachers, either, for that matter.  But I had firsthand knowledge of that frown, a frown that went around corners and up the stairs. 

     One time after I made my “second mistake” comment, the girls in the class chortled and one gleefully informed me that Mrs. **** said that was a very poor attitude to have towards marriage.  It seems in home-ec class they were doing a unit on marriage and family.  Something that came up in class prompted the girls to share with Mrs. **** my referring to my wedding ring to reveal my “first mistake.”  Mrs. **** did not hesitate to inform her class that viewing marriage as a mistake was certainly not a correct attitude, especially if one wished to succeed in marriage.

   I was amused and annoyed.  My gut reaction was to say my attitude towards marriage really wasn’t any of Mrs. ****’s business.  By some stroke of good luck, I managed to stifle my natural reaction.  Instead, I said something like, “Mrs. **** said that, did she?”

     The girls assured me that she had indeed emphatically stated that.  They leaned forward on the edge of their seats, waiting eagerly for me to react.  I saw they were trying to start a war between faculty members.  I saw a never-ending string of pointed comments between me and Mrs. **** ferried by the sophomore girls.  I wanted nothing to do with that, so I stifled myself.

     That incident fairly well ended my wedding ring act to detract attention from my grammatical errors.  Mrs. **** won that battle pretty easily.  I soon forgot the whole thing and probably would not have remembered it.

      But then the 21^st of March really did roll around. 

     At every faculty meeting, we were reminded to get into the hall as soon as we could after the dismissal bell chimed at the end of each class period.  Most of the discipline problems the principal had to handle occurred in the three minutes between classes when every student was in the hallway.  That’s when students sniped at each other and occasionally a fight broke out or someone was reduced to tears by an insult.   Faculty presence prevented many of those problems.

     I was standing by my door as usual between second and third hours.  I never noticed that the girls spirited a large bundle past me into my classroom.  Had they set up a decoy to distract me?  No matter.  They got past me without my notice.

     When the bell rang to start class, I entered the room to find on my desk, a rectangular cake, chocolate icing, with the inscription, “Happy Anniversary Mr. Ottem” in contrasting colored icing.   

    I was surprised and flattered.   I told them I was flattered that they had remembered my anniversary.  The girls were delighted. I avoided asking if they had treated Mrs. **** on her anniversary.  I skirted the reason why they remembered that day, too.  Make love, not war. 

      Of course, the students wanted to dig right in, but disciplinarian me insisted that we finish our work first and spoil our lunch second by enjoying the cake at the end of the hour, which we did.  We carefully cleaned up after the feast, for in those days it was against the rules to have refreshments in the classrooms.  No sense starting a war with the janitor.