Inspired by the prompt: Shamrocks and Leprechauns –and Dailyprompt: Who was your favorite teacher and why.
Photographer Unknown
When I was in the first grade, and the holidays rolled around we made Christmas Trees and Halloween decorations out of construction paper. We got to use clay to make decorations and put on our smocks and painted pictures on easels, must like real artists.
When Saint Patrick’s Day rolled around we got to cut out shamrocks and to take home and some to decorate our desks with.
My Dad was red headed, green eyed, he had freckles and he wasn’t as tall as the other Dads and in my opinion he looked like a Leprechaun, especially when he got mad. So I got busy and made him a bunch of shamrocks and I drew an angry little face with red hair in each one, just for him.
I was having a great time when Carla, who sat a few desks behind me stopped by my desk to the art table to see what I was doing.
All of the sudden she stomped her foot and then she started to pull my shamrocks off of my desk and she started screaming for our teacher, ” Mrs Kerr! Mrs Kerr! Anita is making shamrocks! Mrs. Kerr come and see what Anita is doing!”
I thought I was going to get in trouble for making fun of my Dad. But when Mrs Kerr got to my desk she had to calm Carla down and my artwork wasn’t called into question. Yet.
Carla was in what he would call now a full blown meltdown. I didn’t mind. I figured as long as Carla was standing there and raging up a storm, I would be safe for a little bit and NOT getting into trouble for making fun of my Dad.
Who by the way did look like a leprechaun and had the temper to match.
Carla tried to grab more of my cutouts off of my desk and then she reached for my scissors but Mrs. Kerr, probably thinking that Carla was going to jab them into my skull, rounded though they were and not likely to pierce my head, pulled my chair away from my raging classmate.
Mrs Kerr liked me even though I used to get into loads of trouble with my best friends Bonnie and Linda. On the other hand, I was reading a grade up and I was already trying to write and illustrate my own little stories so she thought I was a promising if not spirited kid.
So Mrs. Kerr grabs Carla and tells her to calm down. Then she scolds her for, her and I will always remember what she said to Carla, ” Your total lack of self control and good manners young lady!”
Mrs. Kerr had this thing. She never called her students ‘ kids or children or young people and if the term ‘kiddos’ would have been in our vocabulary back then, Mrs Kerr would have pulled her tongue out before she said it. At 7 years old we were ” Young Ladies ” and ” Gentlemen ” in her classroom.
We were little kids but she treated us like big kids and I liked that.
” Yeah, young lady, ” I said, ” you ruined my shamrocks and they’re for my Dad!”
I remember kicking myself for saying that.
Carla started to rip up my shamrocks. ” She has no right! She has NO right! She can’t make shamrocks. She can’t have Saint Patrick’s Day!”
By this point I was stressing over my decision to draw my Dad’s face- red and twisted in all of his Leprechaun glory. I was sort of glad that at least a half dozen of them were destroyed when Carla, tears streaming down her face said to Mrs Kerr,
” She can’t have Saint Patrick’s Day- she’s- she’s BROWN. ”
Mrs. Kerr took Carla firmly by her arm and they left the classroom together.
Miss Longmuir came in a minute later and got us back on track.
She gave me some more green construction paper to make more shamrocks and she even offered to help me cut some out, but I, the Mrs. Kerr’s shining example of a Young Lady, smiled and thanked her and said I could do it.
I sat there, smiling with my hands folded- which was what we were supposed to do when we weren’t working on our lessons. I waited for Miss Longmuir to make her way to the front of the room to help some of my other classmates then I unfolded my hands and I opened open my desk and took out my ‘ magic pen ‘ then I went back to Carla’s desk and wrote my name in each one of her little green shamrocks.
And then I drew a Leprechaun on her desk.
It ‘s little was face was smiling and it looked just like my Dad.
Artist Unknown
