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By W. Christopher Epler (about the author) Page 3 of 5 page(s)
And indeed she had said that and was starting to feel fuddled, so she retreated with, "Well, I probably shouldn't be trying to explain such big person things to little kids. I mean, you really don't know ANYTHING, do you, so of course you're going to be confused."
Billy's hand went up again. "Yes," she said levelly.
"But that's your JOB, isn't it, aren't you SUPPOSED to explain things to us?" Mrs. T decided not to complement that question with an answer.
When Billy recounted this conversation to his parents, they looked at each other with Oh Shit looks, thinking Billy's got another loony. In point of fact, he had been down that road before while befriending a neighbor who was being home schooled. This contradiction in terms was engineered by a mother whose mind was a stew of religious pamphlets and Reader's Digests (with a vocabulary to match). After Billy's mother visited her a couple of times, she reported, "You've got to check you brain at the door when you go into that place, it's like walking into the Dark Ages!" Billy's father, who trusted his wife, pulled all the strings he could to get them transferred to Germany.
"Goddamn, not AGAIN!" exclaimed Billy's father. "Where do these potato heads come from?"
"Don't worry about it, Dad, I can handle it, she doesn't scare me. In fact, I feel kind of sorry for her." This was Billy's generous summation, so the parents decided to let him deal with it.
"Well, you TALK to us if she gets TOO weird," insisted his mother.
"OK Mom, deal," and they all high fived the matter.
But Mrs. T had her second wind and sensed she and this eight year old goblin were on a collision course. So she tried one last time to get a little religious backup from her shepherd, hoping for a voodoo doll or something equivalent, but all that came of it was being 'prayed over' by her newly acquired brothers and sisters (which always made her flesh crawl), so she knew, AS ALWAYS, she would have to go it alone. This, indeed, was simply the latest variation of the dominant theme of her life, which was being a decent, fair minded person who other people were ALWAYS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF.
If someone had suggested to Mrs. T that she had psychopathic tendencies, she would have taken it as proof of (her projected) hostility and walked away wondering where all these insensitive people are coming from. In short, she was invulnerable and saw herself as the Blessed Virgin of religious fundamentalism.
Thus, the game was afoot. The 3rd graders rallied to Sir Galahad, and Mrs. T was reduced to her cats. She also sensed she'd been raising her voice too much of late, so she placed a poster on the wall across from her desk, with the words "Silence is Golden" floating above a cemetery (it's all she could find).
Billy was the first to notice it, saying, "That's a cemetery, isn't it?"
She really hadn't noticed it before, and said, "No, it's just a pretty view with benches."
Johnny laughingly corrected, "But, Mrs. Thomlinson, those aren't benches, they're TOMBSTONES. I know because I go out and visit my mommy's mommy in a place like that and grandma died before I was born.
Blind sided again! Mrs. T NEVER talked about death since it filled her with horror and she always tried to change the subject when the shepherd had them sing hymns about "The borne from which no man returns", or "the great bye and bye" (or, "the great bye bye"-she was never quite sure which), associating these limericks with busses filled with people falling into open eye sockets of the grim reaper. She removed the poster the next day, and replaced it with a picture of George Bush Sr., prompting Billy to observe, "I liked the other poster better." Denise laughed out loud at that one, and Denise never laughed at ANYTHING.
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