It was 1991, and I was in Mrs. Springer's 9th-grade English class.
I adored Mrs. Springer. She was bold, funny, independent, and wise—and she once told my mother I was "brilliant," which you'll think was a very charitable thing for her to say after you hear the rest of this story. To this day, I can clearly recall her infectious laugh, her intense red hair, her flair for the dramatic, and the creepy stories she told us on Halloween after darkening the classroom windows with black butcher paper.
We had been given an assignment to write an essay or a book report, with instructions to use Roman numerals to designate each section of the report. Over the course of the year, I remember writing about Shane, Oliver Twist, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pride & Prejudice, and a biography of "Nazi hunter" Simon Weisenthal—but this report could have been about any or none of them. (Actually I know it wasn't about Oliver Twist, because that assignment was an oral report, which my friends and I turned into an embarrassing white-girl rap: "Oliver, Oliver Twist. Do the O-O-Oliver Twist!")
In any case, after struggling to format the assignment according to her instructions (using my family's rudimentary word-processor) and finally giving up, I handed in my finished report and said, "I'm sorry. I just used regular numbers to mark my sections. I couldn't find the Roman numerals on the keyboard I have at home."
Miraculously, Mrs. Springer did NOT laugh. She didn't even chuckle. She just smiled, nodded, and accepted my report. Her face didn't betray even a hint of mockery—a true testament to her acting skills. Bless Mrs. Springer; I don't think I could have done it!
It was only later, on my own, that I realized my humiliating error. And just look at me now:
I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX - X - XI - XII - XIII - XIV - XV - XVI - XVII - XVIII - XIX - XX - XXI - XXII - XXIII - XXIV -XXV - XXVI - XXVII - XXVII - XXIX - XXX
So, tell me: are you inspired to write about a similar event from your past? In your journal or on a scrapbook page, share your thoughts about a teacher whose influence you still feel today. Or write about something embarrassing you said or did in junior high school. Or collect a list of things you should have known by a certain age but somehow didn't—like the fact that pickles were once cucumbers, or that islands don't float, or that chicken-fried steak isn't chicken.
Or you can just enjoy a little laugh at my expense and go on about your day.
