The way she didn't give a damn about anything absolutely thrilled me. I remember she had this tradition that every day of October, for the entire month, instead of reading whatever the curriculum told us to, we read excerpts from horror stories. I mean, really scary shit: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, Frankenstein, Dracula. She would turn out the lights, and we’d all sit in a circle and she’d light a single candle in the middle of the room, and she’d start reciting these words as if they were poetry; as if the were the most glorious sentences in the english language. I remember lying down right next to her and just listening to the sweet roughness of her voice, and the way she could relish syllables and . She always told us not to tell any adults, which of course I never did (what am I, an idiot?) but then some kid (I think it was Stanley Thibodeau, or, as I like to call him now, Thibo-douche, on account of how he ratted out Ms. Blake) told the principal that Ms. Blake was breaking the rules. I never forgave Stanley for that; even to this day, if I saw him in the streets, I would probably beat him up. So, Principal Vachon came down to our classroom one day, and told Ms. Blake to obey the curriculum and teach The Phantom Tollbooth like she was supposed to.
To which Ms. Blake simply smiled her crooked smile, lips cherry red and full, and said, “No, thank you.”
Now, let me tell you something about Principal Vachon, so you can understand the severity of the situation, ok? Ms. Vachon looked the way I always imagined Ms. Truchbull would look 30 years later. She was old and gigantic and had the kind of sharp, piercing eyes that made you think that if the grim reaper ever met her, even he might think twice about taking her out. Which is why she seemed to live forever, on account of how I found out how she just died recently. She was also incredibly stern, and though she never laid a finger on any of us, even having to stare into her eyes for ten seconds was its own kind of torture.
So the fact that Ms. Blake didn’t give a rat’s ass to what Principal Vachon had to say – the fact that she refused Principal Vachon’s orders the way someone refuses another helping of turkey at Thanksgiving dinner – well, let’s just say she was kind of my hero.
And, oh man was Principal Vachon royally pissed. I swear I saw smoke coming out of her nose or something. She took a step closer to Ms. Blake and – I completely remember this conversation:
Principal Vachon: what did you just say to me?
Ms. Blake: Oh, I’m sorry, is your hearing aid not working again? I said N. O. No. As in, I’m going to continue reading The Shining, as I have every other year I’ve ever taught at Goodland Elementary.
Principal Vachon: YOU TEACH THIS EVERY YEAR?!
Ms. Blake: Indeed I do.
Principal Vachon: Why wasn’t I informed of this?
Ms. Blake: Quite frankly, it’s because I knew you would react like this. Listen, Eleanor, I know you may think that they’re not ready for this kind of material, but they are. They are smart enough to distinguish between reality and fiction, they are smart enough to distinguish what is right or wrong – although we did discuss “gray areas” and moral ambiguity last tuesday – and they are most certainly smart enough to know that if they don’t want the fun things to be taken away from them, they shouldn’t come to you.
Principal Vachon: MS. BLAKE, I DEMAND THAT YOU STOP TEACHING THIS INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL AND BEGIN LISTENING TO YOUR SUPERIORS OR ELSE.
Ms. Blake: Or else, you’ll what, Eleanor? Fire me?
And this is when it got really quiet, because Ms. Blake stepped right up to her, only millimeters apart (Although Ms. Blake was almost boob level to Principal Vachon, so she had crane her neck) and said in a whisper:
I wouldn’t do that if I were you. And I think you know why.
What the hell does that mean?! I still have no freaking clue, but it must have been something horrible, because Principal Vachon actually looked scared. Terrified, even. Sure, it was only for a split second, but I’d never seen Principal Vachon look intimidated by anything before. And Ms. Vachon muttered something about how as long as no parents complained, she could continue her debauchery, and Ms. Blake’s eyes lit up like Christmas, and she said “that’s a good girl” and then she sat back down, picked up The Shining, and asked Principal Vachon not to let the door hit her on the way out.
What a woman.
And I have to say, for a woman in her early 50’s she was pretty hot. Even I knew that, and I hadn’t even heard about the concept of a cougar yet. But yeah, she definitely was a TILF, if you know what I mean. She had this long blonde hair that she always wore with a headband or flower or something. And her lipstick – always a bright red, and always applied again after lunch, just in case it had faded with eating. But the most beautiful think about her was her eyes. She had these really dark eyes that seemed almost black, but if you got close enough, they were just a really dark green. The color wasn’t as important as their intensity though – they seemed to change with every mood. They shone, they sparkled when she was happy, and then could be hard and unforgiving when she was angered (which, I admit was quite a lot, since we were all a bunch of troublemakers). And million other feelings in between were reflected a million different ways in her eyes.
And the rest of her wasn’t bad either. Let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly bothered if she dropped something during class.
The thing is, there is definitely a discrepancy between boys and girls when it comes to feelings about Ms. Blake. Most of the girls seemed to hate her (with the exception of that mousy girl, Bridget, the one who called me last week), and most of the boys, even if they didn’t realize it yet, had dreams at night about her curves.
Other than the horror stories during October, I can’t remember much about what she actually taught us, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a great teacher. In fact pretty much all the learning I ever got was from her class.
Because, let’s face it, I’m not that great of a person. I was a brat growing up, always battling against my twin sister for the attention of my parents. I would put shaving cream in my sister’s shoes, and put gum in her barbie doll’s hair, and once I even shaved our pet dog, John Hancock, the day before my mom was supposed to bring him to a dog show! I wasn’t much of a breeze for any of my teachers either. I was the kind of kid who kick other kids in the shin, and administered indian burns, and put tarantulas (they belonged to my best friend at the time, Steve) in my teachers’ desk. With Ms. Blake as my teacher though, all that changed. That first day of school, I planned to pull this, in my opinion, genius prank. Someone had told me that she liked to arrange her chairs in a circle after recess, so that we would all feel like equals when we discussed literature. I would figure out what chair was hers, I would pour super glue all over it, and she’d get stuck to her chair. Priceless. So when we left for recess, I waited by the door, and watched her rearrange the chairs. She left for a bit to get her lunch or something, and quick as lightning I went in there, poured an entire bottle of superglue, and went outside.
When we came back in, She told us all to sit down, and, with a smirk on my face, I did what she told me to. We talked about what each of our favorite books were and why, and what kind of characteristics our favorite stories shared. I remember actually being interested in what we were discussing, which was rare for me, because I had never liked reading before (I was always more of a “let’s blow up stuff” kind of guy). I was so absorbed in the lesson, that I had completely forgotten about the prank, until she got up to grab a book from her shelf.
And then I realized something had gone horribly wrong: I couldn’t move from my chair.
As I was frantically trying to figure out if I had made a miscalculation somehow, Ms. Blake turned around and made eye contact with me. “Is something wrong, Mr. Creyton?” she asked me, her voice dripping with sarcasm. My eyes went wide as she grinned at me, gave me a wink, and asked Kris to hand me a pair of scissors. I never crossed her again.
In turn, I actually started to care less about pranking and more about actually learning stuff. I learned that I actually had a knack for writing, and my overactive imagination came in handy when she had us write short stories during November. But then as soon as middle school started, I pretty much forgot all my progress. I went back to being a bully, and being horrible to my teachers, and not caring about any of my classes. And then, my sophomore year of high school, I ran into Ms. Blake again on the street. She looked great, considering she must have been at least in her mid-50s by that point, she still looked as radiant as ever. She asked my how I was doing, and I told her that I had – that very day – attempted the super glue trick on one of my teachers and they totally fell for it, and she laughed. And then I asked her how she was doing, and for a brief moment there was a flicker of sadness in her eyes – those incredibly expressive eyes that I used to dream about sometimes – and then it was gone and replaced with that impish gleam. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Just tired. It’s been a while since i’ve taught you know.” And then I remembered the last day of class, Ms. Blake gave us this long speech that ended with her telling us she was going to retire. And then I remembered that she told us that the most important lesson she could ever teach us was about how we needed to be happy with our lives, and with who we are as individuals. About the fact that the jobs that we have, and the money we make, and the material objects we buy with the money we make from the jobs that we have don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.
To this day, I still think it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever been taught. And for a while I forgot it, and I will always regret those wasted years in which I could have accomplished something. And so I decided that I was going to make something of my life, instead of just using my status as a class clown to hide from what I really want to be: a writer. I didn’t care about being published or anything. I just wanted to write about the things I knew or wished I knew, in the hopes that someone, somewhere might connect to it. Because I remembered that the only times I was ever truly happy were days when I read my stories allowed. That’s the kind of respect I wanted. Not the kind tat came from people just laughing at my jokes, but real respect for who I was as a person.
So I got a degree in education. I decided to get a job teaching english in Japan for a while, and in my spare time I wrote like crazy about my experiences overseas, and what they meant to me. About what those kids, those incredibly bright and eager kids, meant to me. They were all my children, just like we were Ms. Blake’s, and sometimes I wonder what she must have gone through. To teach for decades and watch them leave you year after year, cause after only three, I couldn’t take it anymore. it was too much. I cared too much about them, and it terrified me, because I had never cared to much about anyone ever. And then I think about how lonely she must have been when she retired. I knew she never married or had any children and that must have been real sad for her. Maybe that’s why she left us. To find new children somewhere.
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