The Third Grade

Image by jimforest via Flickr

Miss Loree Reeves. A stern looking, straight backed, well built woman with gray hair and a mouth like George Washington's. A stern purveyor of elementary education. I just "googled" her and she's not there. Part of me wonders how someone who had as much input into my life as Miss Reeves doesn't have thousands of pages about her. Somehow though, I think she would prefer not being on the web.

When she was my third grade teacher, she seemed to have been at least 70 years old. She continued to teach for many more years. I suspect she was in her 90's when she finally gave it up. She taught in a second floor classroom down the hall from the office where Mr. Stewart kept his straps and hard wooden chairs and probably some midieval devices such as thumb screws and iron maidens. Miss Loree didn't need Mr. Stewart or any of his devices. She had a wooden ruler, a yardstick and a metal ruler.

"Put your hand on the desk," was a chilling note. You knew that one or the other devices of torture was about to play hell with the back of your hand. For some reason none of us that I remember never refused to place our hands in the danger zone. We probably had no idea that we could refuse! Then the whacking started. It was never as bad as you expected - I think she knew that the public humiliation part of it was more punishment than the WHACK of the ruler. We all dreaded the metal ruler until we found out that it was ALL noise and very little pain.

Miss Loree introduced homework into our lives and I learned quickly that for some reason - probably genetic - I would not do homework. Beat me with a strap; put me in the iron maiden; make me miss recess every day of my life: I would not do homework. I think she could have probably rid me of that minor personality maladjustment at that point in my life and I would have become great and famous - but no, she knew that I retained everything and didn't actually need to do homework, so she finally gave up. Not doing homework has followed and haunted me all the days of my life.