School Days, May Days

Grade school was a piece of cake with frosting on it for me. For Tillie, it was more like burnt toast. I had a teacher at home for a mom. She had three introverted women as her "mothers" and a stepfather who could have cared less about her education. Whereas I was encouraged to read, sew, cook, and confront the world's challenges, her mother, aunt, and two sisters gave her no incentive to try anything. She loved music, but never got to take piano lessons. She loved to cook, but never got her hands in the dough. She loved designing clothes, but never got to touch a sewing machine. I don't think her report card ever saw anything above an "E" or F".

I liked most of my teachers, and those I didn't I challenged. I argued endlessly with Miss Irvine, the language teacher, challenging her use of adverbs, adjectives and pronouns. Mr. Diggins, my homeroom and math teacher was a big, gruff man, but I loved that he challenged us with all kinds of puzzles, and gave us prizes for the first pupil to find the answers. When he passed them out to us, I would work on them until I had them solved, and if that was before supper, I'd rush to his home and pass the completed puzzle to him at the door.

Tillie hated Mr. Diggins. She complained to me one day that he had thrown an eraser at her. She had no help with her homework at home,and math to her was a total conundrum.

There was a tradition in our schools that in May we could make Maybaskets and hang them on people's doorhandles. It was to signify love or friendship. If you particularly liked someone, you tucked a candy of some sort in the bottom of the basket. We would try to outdo each other in the creation of the baskets. I hung one on Mr. Diggins' door, and Tillie hung hers on Miss Lovely's. There were several on Ms. Lovely's. I saw no others on Diggins'.

Sadly, Mom told me, much later that Miss Lovely and Mr. Diggins were called before the school board for having "an affair." Ah,me! When in May a young man's fancy....