School was often an overwhelming bewilderment to me. The place that seemed best to most kids, the playground, is so much chaotic noise. I felt like I always had to be on high alert, because the rules seemed very arbitrary. Like, the time I got in trouble for yelling on the bus, but the boy who pulled my hair didn’t. It all depended on if the grownup in charge noticed.
But it isn’t like there is a choice. And I figure out what I can, and keep my feet in line and my eyes and ears open.
One day, near the end of first grade, I was in line at the drinking fountain. Two boys in front of me were talking about their 2nd grade teacher, Mrs Hangin. “You know that big tree in front of her class? That’s why her name is Hangin. By the end of the year you’ll be hangin’ from it!”
And yes, Mrs. Hangin became my second grade teacher. Even worse, most of my friends were in the other second grade class. Their parents knew, and made sure. By the time my parents heard, they were fine with it. An older teacher with a reputation for strictness? Sure, that sounds good. It will be good for her.
I really struggled in some ways no one even thought about in the early 1960’s. I remember staring at a page of math or writing, knowing I just needed to write the next number or word. But my hand felt like it was held in place and my brain couldn’t make it move. Or my thoughts would drift. I would be staring off, across to the houses on the other side of the canyon, thinking about what the people might be doing at that moment. Then, whack! Mrs. Hangin would snatch the pencil out of my fingers and smack me on the head with it.
Things like ADD and ADHD were unknown in schools then. You conformed to expectations or you were punished. We did not have special needs children in school with us. “Retarded” kids went, we weren’t sure, someplace else.
More than that, though, Mrs Hangin had some very strong opinions that I swallowed whole at the time. After all, she was the teacher. Like the evils of communism.
I started 2nd grade in 1962. The previous Autumn our country had held on tight through the Cuban Missile Crisis. That actual time doesn’t stand out in my memory, but I do remember being afraid any time a plane flew over, listening for the sound of a dropping bomb. There was an air raid siren on the top of the mountain where my daydreams traveled. When it shrieked out a drill we obediently ducked under our desks and covered the backs of our necks. Mrs Hangin made sure we knew, this was because the communists wanted to take away our freedom.
Then in November of my second grade year, President Kennedy was assassinated. So many people my age and older have strong memories of that event. I have jumbled images, and I honestly don’t know actual memories from stories I was told later and repeated film clips. I do remember being taught about the meaning of the half mast flag. I would look up at it day after day, flying above the school. It was a reminder that we were all sad together.
Later in the school year we started learning cursive writing. One day Mrs. Hangin was yelling at the class that if we didn’t learn to write our lower case k and b correctly we would never get into college. I knew then, I was hopeless. I was already a failure at 7, because no matter how hard I tried, my writing was a messy mess. (Hint, it still is, but I did go to college.)
One day my mom had to come to the school to talk to Mrs. Hangin. It didn’t matter what the issue was or if my dad was working for a client that day or at home, if it was about my school my mom had to leave work early to handle it. I knew that meant I would get a spanking that night, not for what I did but for my mom missing work. That day I heard Mrs. Hangin tell my mom I was average.
Average! It sounded so, well, easy to ignore, to overlook. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. It was nothing. I decided that day, that moment, that whatever else I was, I had to figure out a way to not be average.
Mrs. Hangin retired, I don’t remember if it was the end of that year or the next. It was maybe the beginning of the end of an era. That was the school year we became part of the Los Angeles School District. New standards and dress codes began to be applied. But it would take years before more complex learning differences began to be recognized and addressed.
The changes of that decade, from the Civil Rights Movement through the Vietnam War and rights for women, it all seems like a dream now. Everything was supposed to be better. All we needed was love, peace, and good music to heal the world. Don’t be a litterbug and ban the bomb.
Just watch out for the communists.
Note: I’m not sure that was the actual spelling of the teacher’s name, but that was the sound. Also, I’m using a photo from early 1961. Many of the photos of me around that age were lost.
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