A Brief Autobiography of Writing in 1500 Words
“You’re an American. Say something. Say something in American.”
I don’t remember it as a taunt. More of an annoying request, repeated on the playground and the boys room on my third first-day-of-school. This was my third first grade in 6 months. I attended three different first grades, with three different teachers in two countries. Is an autobiography of writing a memoir of teachers? Who taught me to write? Who was in the room where I was writing? Where were those rooms located? Do you remember learning to write? Or learning to read? I remember the spaces where that learning supposedly occurred. I say ‘supposedly’ because clearly it happened. I’m thinking words, transmitting them through my pen, transferring them with ink set to a page, which I then re-read and type and you’re presumably reading them, the result of a process began in utero. I don’t recall THAT space of development, but I do remember pre-school in Sacramento, California. Perhaps nervously clinging on the first day, reluctant to separate from the legs of my mom. Pre-school began with a circle and songs and a drum and a giant anthropomorphic letter on an easel. C. Caterpillar. Names. We spoke our names out loud, enunciating each syllable with a beat from the drum. Matt-thew. Matt-thew. 2 beats. Ci-dar. Ci-dar. Me-la-nie. Me-la-nie. First the teacher played the plastic drum, then one of us was invited to percuss and lead the univocal syllabation of naming.
C is for Caterpillar. We practiced making Cs and caterpillars, tracing the letter c with a pencil on soft, green, widely ruled paper. c. c. c.c. Uppercase. Lowercase. We practiced writing, and speaking and singing. ‘We can sing a rainbow…sing a rainbow…sing a rainbow, too!”[1] We raised circles of color laminated to popsicle sticks on cue. I enjoyed singing in the circle.
I could easily jump from pre-school to kindergarten as I trace the genealogical origins of my writing, but that would neglect weekly Sunday school class and church. You’re read to in church, and you might follow along, even if you’re just pretending. In Sunday school, there are even more activities to practice words: songs, bible verses, there’s a felt board---all the narratives. Playing with stories, familiar stories, recounting stories. Recall the pre-writing memory, filled with stories before I knew how to write a sentence.
reading in kindergarten
We were in different ability groups. I was in the advanced group, with the ‘Honey Comb Reader’ or some such nonsense. I could tell we were advanced, because the words in our books were smaller, with more pages and fewer pictures. We practiced speed-reading, with a book called ‘Victory Drill’. We read lists of words within an allotted time: cat, bat, sat, mat, fat, rat. If we exceeded our number from last time (reading more words correctly in under 30 seconds) then we got to select a prize from the treasure box, a plastic top or a spider ring. I think my sister got one of those red, acetate flopping fish fortune tellers, which (of course) I immediately wanted as well. She is 5 years my senior, and if she did something, I wanted to, too. She was always the apotheosis of cool. I wanted to read her books. I would sneak into her room to steal them: Ramona the Pest, Superfudge[2], Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang—that one was a little more advanced, but what could you expect? It was Ian Fleming’s follow up to 007.
Kindergarten was a half-day at the Gloria Dei Lutheran School with Mrs. Kreitz and her assistant Ms. Barron (I think). Mr. Kreitz taught my sister’s 5th grade class. Ms. Barron’s two sons took violin lessons with me. I’m sure we wrote in Kindergarten, but I really remember reading, and reciting bible verses, and learning lines for the holiday pageants. And singing.
My first first grade began with Mrs. Schaefer. Before I was in her class, I had thought she was mean. She never seemed to smile, her lips turned down slightly in a perma-frown. And she was probably older than the kindergarten teachers. Plus, first grade was a significant leap from kindergarten. You went from a shared table to your own desk, and it was a full school day, including lunch.
Funny, I don’t remember writing in her class, but first grade was significant because I attended 3 different first grades at 3 schools, on two continents, in two countries. I left Mrs. Schaefer’s class around Christmas break, and started up again with Ms. Shelley in an American school on an Air Force Base in Alconbury, England. I could walk to school from billeting, the temporary housing for relocated families, kind of like an extended stay motel. I got homework for the first time. Ms. Shelley’s class had learned to tell time, but not Mrs. Schaefer’s class, so I had worksheets to practice that. It was painfully laborious. I think that was the first time I recall struggling to ‘learn’. Prior to that, learning ‘happened’. But now I had to ‘catch-up’. There were deadlines, and discrepancies between what I knew, and what my new teacher needed me to know. I was given lines, once, as a punishment from Ms. Shelly. I think we had won a movie and popcorn party, as part of a class fundraiser, so we got to watch The Muppet Movie in class. Ms. Shelly gets called to the door to talk to a guest. Kermit and Fozzie are Movin’ Right Along[3] (buggaboom buggaboom) and I’m bopping at my desk, maybe singing along. Ms. Shelly returns and we get yelled at. Me, perhaps two others (maybe Jason whose dad is Superman, and who got his ID card before he turned 7. Jason lied a lot.) are taken to the room next door and aren’t permitted to finish the movie. Instead, we have to write lines:
I will not misbehave in class and shame Ms. Shelley in front of her guest
I will not misbehave in class and shame Ms. Shelley in front of her guest
I will not misbehave in class and shame Ms. Shelley in front of her guest [4]
I was crying. My mom has to sign the pages so she knows what I did. I collapse in her arms, ashamed. That was a challenging year.
first day of school, pt. III
When the school year ended, I started in a third school. It was off-base, where we were now living, in a small, Anglo-Saxon Village called Barnack, 2 miles outside of Stamford, not too far from Grantham (where Downtown Abbey is supposedly located). Barnack CoE Primary School: Church of England, which means Anglican, or Episcopalian. 3 classrooms, 2 grades per class, with a pre-school (which they call Infant) in a mobile classroom. Grades spanned from Top-Infant (first grade) to Fourth Year Junior (fifth grade). I joined the end of the school year as a Top Infant. Was Mrs. Selby our teacher? No, Mrs. Archer, I believe. We wore a uniform—white Oxford shirt, grey or maroon sweater---my mom never let me wear a maroon sweater. Grey pants, or shorts and a grey tie with maroon stripes. That’s the year I learned to use a Thesaurus (or was it the following?) and write with a fountain pen. They taught calligraphy, not cursive. Our spelling tests came from words we had messed up on our written work. We wrote poems, and creative writing peppered with adjectives that we illuminated with colored pencils in the margins.
the mechanics of writing
We used Berol #2 pencils, and fountain ink pens. I didn’t learn cursive---I learned calligraphy. How pretentious is that. The graphite shed by the pencil marked the page. The ink leaked by the fountain pen, blotted by hand. Each tempo is imbricated with tool, temperament and thought. No ballpoint pen, ever. Nope. Not in elementary school. Rough drafts were completed in unlined composition books, with pencil, preparing each page by creating the margins with a ruler. Then you’d slip the guidelines behind the page, a pre-printed template to guide your penmanship. Final drafts are completed on full-size A4 paper, after preparing the margins, and paper-clipping the guidelines. Every line blotted with a piece of blotting paper received at the start of the term, and used judiciously throughout the year. Blotting paper is stiff, and fuzzy, absorbing an ink-stained reflection of your writing. Write a line of text, or a word, or a title, or a single letter, then carefully place the blotting paper on top of the fresh ink. Press the paper, gently remove it and you’re left with two imprints, your dried line of text upon the page, and a slightly obscured doppelgänger locked within the fibers of the blotting sheet. My earliest writing members: pencil, fountain pen, blotting paper, guidelines, composition books, all material constraints structuring the process through which my writing extruded.
[1] You can sing a rainbow with The Dells, https://youtu.be/CZwXtgHeKso, and Cilla Black https://youtu.be/Hzb2xkI85O4
[2] Random: I met the author of SuperFudge, Judy Blume, when I portrayed the title character (based on her son) in one my first NYC professional musical theatre engagements.
[3]Just try not bopping along with Kermit and Fozzie, I dare you https://youtu.be/MMR5JVo21wQ
[4] I’m taking poetic license here, but you should still feel sorry. This is one of my earliest memories of public shaming.
