Sharon Marshall and Mr. Reynolds

In sixth grade, Sharon Marshall was my best friend; and Mr. Reynolds was our teacher – the only male teacher I ever had in primary school. We were fascinated by this phenomenon and decided to check him out.

Both of us were good kids – straight A's, always had our homework done on time, yada yada. The first time Mr. Reynolds handed out report cards, we were both shocked. We each had a B in Health. To make matters worse, he gave Rodney (the kid who flunked almost everything) an A in Health (his fingernails were always grimy, and ours were always clean – well mostly) and in art and in something else … 3 A's. I don't know that Rodney ever had an A in his life.

So after the bell rang, we marched up to his desk and asked why we got B's in Health, and why he gave Rodney an A. He said it was good for us and good for Rodney. Hmmmm.

Our 11-year-old minds started scheming. We decided, since we were on a downward roll, to go full out and shock the class. We told Mr. Reynolds our idea, and he agreed to go along. The next day, as planned, Sharon and I kept talking to each other during class, ignoring Mr. Reynolds' admonitions. Finally, he told us very sternly to write our names on the board (the place of shame) and that, for homework, we had to write 100 times on paper, "I will not talk in class."

You could have heard a pin drop. Sharon was giggling, and I was red-faced. Our good idea could only have been born on a full moon. This was definitely lunacy and definitely not the 'high' I had imagined it would be. That night, I wrote out "I will not talk in class" – 25 times. That was enough, it was boring beyond measure. So I started the next 3 sheets with the ordered phrase, then put ditto marks down the rest of the page. The next day, when I turned it in, Mr. Reynolds said nothing. (Sharon, of course, wrote out all 100 sentences.)

There were lots of lessons for me in this one. The main one being the compassion one teacher had for a lonely, disenfranchised little boy. I related to Rodney very differently after that.

PS  I always wondered what Mr. Reynolds thought about my pages of dittos. Looking back, I think I may always have had that smart-aleck streak. Good to know.