Ethel

Model photo by Bertellifotografia

"You're the dumb one," Brother shot back. "You must've been dropped on your head to be that stupid!"

I stuck out my tongue, and he did the same. I wasn't dumb. I just wasn't interested in school. 

Teachers didn't like girls like me, so they wrote about it on all of my avocado-green report cards from Beardsley Elementary School: 

"She makes careless mistakes … She seems disinterested in her schoolwork … She daydreams too much and lacks self-control." 

I hated report card day more than a dental visit. There was always trouble with Mom when I got home from school.

After lunch, the teacher handed out report cards and told us to put them in our desks for safekeeping. I peeked at mine, which made me sick to my stomach, and then stuffed it into my messy desk. I couldn't find it anywhere when the bell rang to go home. 

As soon as I got in the door, Mom asked to see my report card. I tried to tell her I'd left it at school, but she didn't believe me. She insisted I'd hidden it in an oleander bush along Robert's Lane and even threatened to drive me to get it!

Smart kids got a dollar bill for every A and fifty cents for each B. All I ever got was a lecture and a parent-teacher conference. 

Spelling lists went home on Mondays. I could never find mine inside my messy desk, so I often left school without one. After coming home empty-handed for the second time, Mom grounded me for my carelessness and threatened to write a note to my teacher asking her to pin my spelling list to my coat like a kindergartener. 

While sitting on my bed thinking about my spelling list problem, I got the idea to copy twenty words from the Hans Christian Anderson pop-up book on my bookshelf. Mom believed me when I said I'd suddenly found my missing spelling list in my coat pocket, which lifted my grounding that day. 

She always wondered how I got Ds on my spelling tests. I'd sit in the kitchen booth while she watched me write each word five times and use them in sentences. I even got 100% sometimes when she quizzed me. I learned how to spell – just different words than everybody else.

I had a friend named Ethel who was in my grade but attended a special classroom. Ethel had flaming red curly hair, was covered in freckles, and wore cat-eyed glasses like me. All the other girls at school wore dresses, but Ethel wore purple stretchy pants and a matching turtleneck. She walked with a limp because one of her legs was slightly longer than the other. Kids on the playground said Ethel talked funny, but I didn't notice. I thought she was incredible.

During recess, I often found Ethel drawing in the dirt beside the clover patch where Anita and I and the other girls made flower chain necklaces. Ethel told me she was an artist and an environmentalist. Using a sharpened stick, Ethel created a breathtaking panorama of a deer family grazing near a stream filled with jumping fish. She drew pine trees, sunflowers, and a skunk with babies. In the background, under the sun, smoke clouds billowed from a nuclear power plant. Ethel said that people were harming nature and that we should do something about it. So, we began drawing environmental pictures in the dirt together. When kids came over to see what we were doing, we said in unison, "Give a hoot, don't pollute!"

Because of Ethel, I discovered something I was truly good at – drawing. That year, my teacher wrote about it on my report card. 

"Through her interest in art, she has shown more pride in other areas of her work. She is so excited to learn that she can do something outstanding. Maybe this is the key."

Mom really liked that.