MRS. MILLER I was thirteen years old, insecure, and in the eighth grade. I wasn’t attractive, I wasn’t athletic, and I wasn’t popular I had an accent, and my hair was far too long for an era that favored crewcuts. The Beatles were just around the corner but, alas, they hadn’t yet arrived. I was bony, gaunt, lank, lean, thin and scrawny, and I refused to go swimming with anyone lest I should have to remove my shirt and expose a body so emaciated and feeble. I did feel “smart,” but what few brains I might have had were no advantage to me in such a capricious world. You might think that simply out of a sheer sense of inadequacy I should have developed a bit of humility, or perhaps a quiet and introspective nature. You might infer that I should have been shy. No. I was loud, obnoxious and arrogant. Always the class clown. Such were the tools with which I began my teenage trek to adulthood.
I’ll not bore you with sad anecdotes or melancholy memories of my eighth grade year. Suffice it to say that thirteen has never been my favorite age. In retrospect I should have put my own children to sleep for the duration of their thirteenth year. There must be something to that number. I’m not at all surprised that hotels avoid having a thirteenth floor.
I guess I survived by enduring. I was beaten up at the bus stop for mouthing off to the bus stop bully. I had a crush I still remember with longing – Susan Kirkpatrick where are you and why didn’t you want to kiss me when we played post office at your birthday party? Ah, well. I was beaten up on the basketball court for mouthing off to the basketball court bully. I fell over while leaning backwards in my desk soon after the teacher told me it would happen, and everyone laughed. I was beaten up after school for mouthing off to the after-school bully. During physical education dance classes the jocks would cut in on me when I was assigned a nice-looking girl as my square-dancing partner. I was beaten up several times while square dancing. There, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve bored you with my sad anecdotes and melancholy memories.
But, honestly, was life really all that bad? I don’t know. I don’t remember most of it. But I think so. Until that day, and recalling this makes recalling all those gloomy memories worthwhile, when I took my yearbook to Mrs. Miller for her signature.
Mrs. Miller was my math teacher, a lovely mad woman given to feverishly sucking pieces of chalk because, she proudly declared, it helped her to give up cigarettes. Everything about Mrs. Miller was alive and in a constant state of motion and emotion. When she looked at you after asking a question she did so with vibrant, dancing eyes that beckoned the answer from you. And if you hesitated, a raspy, nicotine voice would cajole you. “Come on, duckie! I know you know it. You know you know it. Tell the world!!” And you did, because Mrs. Miller never asked you a question you couldn’t answer. She also endeavored to call all her students by a name no one else would call them, a name reserved for her use alone.
“Manuel, my dear matador, swagger to the board and do problem seven!” How deliciously embarrassing.
Age is at best a nebulous concept for eighth graders, but I think Mrs. Miller must have been close to retirement. She dressed oddly, everyone said so, she wore too much make-up, sometimes people laughed at it, and she always wore a crazy blonde wig that was never on straight.
When she could tell I was having a particularly difficult day, and she could always tell, she would keep me after class. After our math class, Mrs. Miller had her planning period, and how well I recall those splendid, rambling chats in the blissful solitude of that empty classroom. Only empty cathedrals have since elicited that same mood in me. There, for however long it took her, Mrs. Miller would unruffle my bruised feathers, reorient my perspective, and sit quietly while I cried. She nursed my wounds and dried my tears. Some days I would tell her my great secrets, others my great fears.
“Don’t you worry Manuel, it will pass.” And so it would.
After observing the proper rites, she would get me to laugh at some silly joke. Soon after, I’d be laughing at myself and my foolish predicament. And then I would find myself babbling on about my hopes and my dreams and my ambitions, and our chatter would transform the empty classroom and fill it with magic fantasies and dazzling possibilities. I know now that our chatter was not at all responsible for that magic transformation. The magic was Mrs. Miller. When we were done, she would carefully write me an all-powerful pass to my next class in order that I suffer no harm for my transgression. I would leave quietly and renewed, a smile confidently in place and eyes moist with gratitude. Mrs. Miller was outrageous, she was eccentric, she was bizarre, and I loved her.
And so, at year’s end I took my brand new yearbook to Mrs. Miller to sign.
“Manuel,” she gasped, “this is empty! No one has written in it! I have no juicy tidbits to read and entertain me!” She slapped the virgin yearbook on her desk, leaned precariously over me on one hand, and rearranged her wig with the other.
“Bring it to me filled to the brim!” she bellowed. “I want to be the last to write.” And so I did, even at the embarrassing expense of asking near strangers to write in my book.
“Anything. Just write something.”
Triumphantly, I brought my exhausted yearbook to Mrs. Miller. She read it with utter delight and abandon, giggling at the compliments, what few there might have been, chuckling at the inanities, and howling at the cruelties. And when she was done, and after we’d both laughed, she took my book and said, “Let me keep it a while, Manuel. I want what I write to be the great truth about you. I will return it Monday. Now off with you. Find yourself a se ±orita.”
And so Monday morning I raced from the bus to Mrs. Miller’s classroom to retrieve my book. She smiled and whispered, “I have found the great truth about you.”
I darted from the classroom to discover my great truth alone, and I found solitude under the basketball bleachers of an empty gymnasium. There I opened my yearbook and searched. Under her photograph she had written, “Become a heart specialist, Manuel. You understand them so well.”
I became a teacher, Mrs. Miller. I think that’s what you really meant. It was in my heart, which you understood so well.
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