Perhaps the upside to a year of a pandemic is that there were less New Year’s resolution articles. Normally there would be tons of tips on how to choose and how best to keep your resolutions. There have been a few, but they are far gentler in their approach. After all, just surviving this year is accomplishment enough. Beating yourself up for not writing every day or losing more weight (or even keeping the weight off) just feels cruel right now.
Maybe these thoughts were what caused me to become so annoyed listening to a recent podcast where a writer talked about how important a particular teacher had been in her life. This is a common story – the teacher who saw in you what you couldn’t see, gave you the necessary tools, and then sent you forth to live your dream life. Mostly, I don’t think it’s true, but I am a pessimist.
For me it’s always the most negative comment or abusive teacher who stays in my mind, not the kind one. I still think back to a teacher I had in middle school. She’d retired from teaching and was initially hired to be principal of a, what I now realize, not-very-good religious school. At some point there was an upset by a group of parents over something a teacher said or did, and there were some firings/resignations, which caused this old and angry woman to begin teaching again.
There was an assignment she’d given us, I believe in the seventh grade. We were to each write a story and then use magazines to cut out the words, pasting it together for the finished product. I can’t remember if she showed us examples or just verbally explained what she wanted. I came up with a story of a swimmer at a swim meet. Why, I don’t know, since I didn’t swim then and still can’t. The story was written fairly quickly and I had been pleased with it. The bulk of the time used was cutting out the words from magazines, which my mother and older sister helped me with.
On the day it due, I’d hoped the teacher would like the story and give me what I was often lacking and constantly looking for – approval. Instead I received grief. After the teacher read my story out loud, she began waiving the sheet around so the others could see it. She then proceeded to yell at them, saying, “why couldn’t you all do something like this. This is what you were supposed to do.” The other students had mostly just cut out words to create short sentences. An older, artsier, student would have claimed they were haikus, but most seventh graders in Florida in the 1980s just looked confused, and then became angry with me.
I was already the weird kid at the school with older parents who was poor and never went anywhere on summer break. The last thing I needed was another reason for my fellow classmates to not like me, and that teacher offered it on a silver platter.
After that I still thought up stories and wanted to become a writer, but it was a long time before I wrote another one again. Of course, even those years later I was still looking for a fleeting amount of praise and approval.
If I’m to be honest, I think I wasted much of my life looking for that approval, and then gave up so easily when it wasn’t received. This year I plan on working to lessen this mostly un-useful need and give myself the approval I crave.