Mrs. Barrett's Class

Chapter Five

Mrs. Barrett's Class

Mrs. Barrett's fifth grade class, it wasn't too bad, as far as classes go. 

  She was downright pretty, in a teacherly kind of way. I felt like I was a pretty fortunate guy, but not so fortunate that I  wouldn't get swats if I needed them. And I needed them twice that year.

   I stuck a sign on the back of Billy Wilson's shirt that read, “Kick Me Please.” Sure enough, someone did. A fight broke out in the middle of the aisle as I sat back and watched. 

 It was one of my greater achievements that year.

 Yep, I was in big trouble.

Of course I was the only person sitting behind Billy, so it was an easy deduction who the culprit was.

The next time I would meet Mrs. Barrett's board of education would be the time somebody sneaked into the classroom during recess and wrote the F word on the blackboard.  No one was brave enough to confess, a true sign of fifth grade wisdom. I, being the most foul mouthed kid in school, got the blame. I figured I deserved it though for all the other times I didn't get caught.

In a way you could say the entire incident was a good thing, I mean, it got me to thinking, is this the way people see me? Is this the way I'll be remembered should I die suddenly? 

Billy was still pretty upset about that Kick Me Please sign I had stuck on his back a few weeks back. The likelihood of me surviving through to Christmas seemed pretty slim.

Things had to change.

And so I set about the job to rebuild my image...again.

That could mean only one thing...well maybe more than just one, but hey, first things first...no more foul mouth.

But Mrs. Barrett  was great, if you put aside the swats.

At least I didn't get stuck in Mrs. Sloan's class.

Mrs. Sloan's  class was just across the hall.

She use to carry dinosaur bones  to class everyday.

Her students called her Ms. Sloanie Bony. Her students  believed she had removed a few bones  from her own body. This would have explained her poor posture and exaggerated limp. Who knows the strange workings of the fifth grade mind? Sometimes I don't think even fifth graders  understanding other fifth graders.

But Mrs. Sloan had a purpose behind her madness. She used those bones  as a sort of show and tell  like thing. They were replicas of bones from some ancient creature found somewhere in South America.

Mary Tate asked her if she had been present when the animal had died.

Mary wasn't the brightest girl in that class, but she was cute.

I noticed her the first day of school. I thought about asking her to be my girlfriend, until Sarah walked through the door.

And besides, Mary was in Mrs. Sloan's class, and that...well, the logistics just weren't right.

Sarah... the most beautiful creature to step into my yet uncomplicated young life. Suddenly memories of Penny vanished like a mushroom cloud over some nuclear test site. I could almost taste the radioactive fallout.

“Hi Mom.” she smiled.

Oh man,talk about a bomb. Here was a super, triple headed, multi-everything, war bomb of all things bombable.

Mrs. Barrett, my fifth grade teacher, the mother to what might possibly be my next true love?

Suddenly my young uncomplicated life became...well, complicated.

She walked around the room before finding a seat next to me.

We turned and looked at each other.

Her dark brown hair shimmered as it flowed over her shoulder. She flipped it  with her delicate pale white hand.

If she was trying to get my attention...well.

I gazed deeply into her glimmering brown eyes.

And then she spoke.

She spoke the words that would define our very future. She spoke the words that every fifth grade boy ever dreams of hearing ,the words I had dreamed of hearing... the words...

“Hi.”

Well, it wasn't so much what she said as how she said it. It was sweet, angelic, music to my ears.

Things began to spin around in my head. Beads of sweat formed on my brow. I thought I was about to be sick.

I had to say something, something smart, something intelligent, something that would show her I was no ordinary kinda' guy. I was a foreigner from a foreign country, a man of the world, a man of culture.

Well, maybe not so much culture, but...I'm sure there's something. Does being left handed count?

What I needed was something deep, something thought provoking, something like...,

“Uh...uh, hi.”

And that was it, our great exchange of intellectual conversation had ended.

I had shown myself to be no different than any other ordinary fifth grade boy idiot.

Right now Mary Tate was looking pretty good to me. At least I think I could talk to her without drooling all over myself.

I mean, how hard could it be to talk to a girl who thinks her teacher lived in the Pleistocene Age. And besides, she was cute, that should count for something, right.

Problem solved, Mary it was, until...lunch time.

I was a man on a mission, a man possessed by love. I was ready to ask Mary to go with me.

 Just exactly where  I hadn't a clue. I don't think any fifth grader knows where you go when you ask somebody to go with you. It was one of those mysterious things that  solve themselves by the time you reach high school. My brother tried to explain it to me once, but I never understood it.

I stood in the cafeteria line in front of Mary. I went over my lines. I knew exactly what I was going to say, except for one thing...courage. I could feel the beads of sweat returning to my forehead, my face felt on fire, I was going to puke, but I didn't.

I turned around and said,

“Mary...uh, I mean, well... I was wondering if...um,”

“What is it Mike? Do you have something to ask me?”

She spoke like a girl who knew what was about to happen. She had a glimmer in her eye, a spark of hope, and dreams of eternal love, of...

“Well, um , no, I mean, not really...um, it's, just that...well, I was wondering.”

I paused, looking into those pretty bluish green eyes, I could see she was waiting for that special question, that one phrase that would unite us forever... but then it happened.

“Mike!. I've been looking everywhere for you. I was wondering if you wanted to sit with me at lunch. I've already saved us a place and everything.”

I turned and saw the prettiest girl on the entire planet. It was Sarah, Mrs. Barrett's daughter.

My knees grew weak as I started to go down, but Sarah was there to catch me.

“Mike, are you alright?”

Alright, HA! Was I not a  a man? Of course I was alright. Just because a guy has a little slip once in awhile doesn't mean he's not alright. Just because the most beautiful girl in the entire universe is standing in front of you doesn't mean...well...just what does it mean? 

What it means is complete and total brain death.

Forget Billy Wilson, this girl didn't even have to lay a finger on me to bring me down.

I looked at her and answered in the most intelligent way I could, for a brain dead zombie that is,

“Hubba, hubba, hubba,...uh, I...I...sure, I suppose that would be...yeah, why not.”

Poor Mary stood there, hurt and angry. She clinched her right fist and let loose a right swing that would have made Mohamed Ali proud. 

I went down like the Titanic on speed.

She stood over me, glared, and asked,

“Weren't you going to ask me something MIKE?”

I ate lunch with Sarah that day, but it was painful.

I watched Mary looking at me from across the cafeteria. I felt bad about the way things turned out, it was sad really.

 But, I learned something that day. I learned sometimes life takes funny little turns, and you never know what to expect, like Mary's right hook. 

 And your plans don't always turn out the way you expect, like Mary's right hook.

 And sometimes the things you never say, simple things, things not of great wisdom or thought, but things like, "Mary, will you go with me ,"  often hurt the most, like Mary's right hook.

 I never asked Mary to be my girlfriend, I should have.

But things would get better between us, but for now...well, I'll just have to settle for Mary's right hook to the jaw.

Author's Note

Much of this chapter is fictitious. The part about Billy, the F word on the board are pretty much as they happened. Most of the Sarah account is true too.
The cafeteria scene was embellished quite a bit.

Reviews

[Woody]

sorry Mike. thought I'd read everything. I missed your writes.
such wonderful storytelling. you do have the knack of drawing pleasant characters and telling a story in an uncomplicated way.
I enjoyed the read my friend.

[Marie]

I would like to think the part about Mary's hitting you was true. That's a shameful way to treat a girl. She should have knocked you down and kicked you across the cafeteria.