Mrs. Kelly

4/12/2005 Tuesday - First of all, today is Mrs. Kelly's birthday. Mrs. Kelly was my kindergarten teacher. I guess I remember her birthday every year because it is a month after mine and she was my favorite teacher in grade school. She was awesome. I can't remember a lot about kindergarbage but I do distinctly remember Mrs. Kelly taping me to my chair one day. I was a little hyper as a kid (I know, you're shocked) and on more than one occasion Mrs. Kelly had to tape my mouth shut to keep me quiet. Now a days she'd be fired and get sued but back in 1979 it was acceptable. I remember that we didn't have individual desks but big tables that sat 6 kids. There were 6 storage compartments under the table so we could keep our pencil boxes and stuff. I don't think we had our own glue back then. One day I just wouldn't stay in my seat so Mrs. Kelly took her wide masking tape, folded it over to make it double-sided and stuck it to my chair. Then she sat me down and told me not to get up again. I realize I could have stood up but I'm not sure if I knew that back then. All I know is that I was embarrassed and didn't get up for the rest of the day. When we graduated from kindergarten into the first grade, Mrs. Kelly came with us. Fr. Frank (the pastor) joked at the ceremony that one student had finally graduated after 3 years in kindergarten. In the first grade, Mrs. Kelly taught us math. I distinctly remember two things about first grade. One day I got 100% on a math paper (I don't think we had tests back then). Mrs. Kelly sent me to Sr. Lucia's office (the principal) to show her. Sr. Lucia wrote something on my paper in cursive. It was like code since I wouldn't learn cursive for another year. When I took it home, my mom hung it up on the door of china cabinet. Normally stuff like this belonged on the fridge but for some reason this was special. My dad even brought home some kind of plastic sleeve to protect it. That was the first time I actually felt smart. My second memory of that year (oh wait, I just remembered 2 more from that year) was being put in the dumb reading group. Apparently my prowess in math didn't <insert big word here> into reading. [I'm laughing out loud right now because I can't think of the word I need and I'm writing about my poor verbal skills 24 years ago.] I guess it was the best of times and the worst of times. Maybe I'm wired to be better with numbers than words or maybe the good math paper and the dumb reading group affected me for years to come. I guess I'll never know. Mrs. Kelly is dead now. I remember she died when I was in college. I would have gone to her funeral if I had known. I think she had a brain tumor. I remember something in her obituary about an alligator attack or something. God Bless You, Mrs. Kelly.

My other two memories from that year were Mrs. Kelly taking her son, Brendan, into the cloak room to spank him for doing something wrong in class. My second is of Connie Mahnke (sp?) running out of the same cloak room (on a different day) without a shirt on. The girls were changing for gym. I have no idea why she ran out. All the boys laughed and Mrs. Kelly explained that boys and girls at that age are all the same. It was still funny to 6 year-olds though.