The "Worst" Day of My Life....

as a 7-year old

Image accredited to Black Pine Circle School

It was during 2nd grade at John F. Ward Elementary...I would say about 2 or 3 months since the first day of the school year. I was the student who knew ALL the answers, who NEVER got in trouble, and ALWAYS one of the teacher's favorites -- a miss goody goody who was indulged by good grades. The atmosphere of the room was what anyone would expect out of an elementary school classroom. Everything used for decorations could be found in the Teacher's store (which I've been to). Colorful schemes of paper were stapled all over the wall. There were cutesy and motivational posters on the wall, huge decorated name tags on each student's desk, student artworks hanging by threads from the ceiling. There was a corner in the room dedicated to the "Reading Zone," and it was designated by many pillows and a large rug. I remember the constant use of the overhead--I loved writing on it....but so did everyone else.

Image accredited to Tom Slatin

In this class, the disciplinary action taken was by moving your clothespin (with your name on it) down this long wooden stick that had blocks of different colors. So everyone in the class starts at the top in the "I've behaved well" color block. The next color block marked "Warning". The next was like "No recess". About 3 colors blocks later, you have the "Go to the Principal's office" color block. This was different for me, since up until now, we had the "Sad Book"--which was basically the same concept; the number of times you wrote your name in the book that day resulted in the harshness of the punishment.

Now, onto the incident: I had a math homework assigned one night. After I went to sleep, my mother went into my backpack and took out the math homework to check it. So the next morning, I grabbed my backpack and headed off to school. At the beginning of class that day, Mrs. Evard asked us to turn in our math assignment. I went to my backpack, and it was nowhere to be found! I went into panic mode. Never in my life have I never NOT had my homework.

 

So I went up to her desk after everyone turned in the homework and told her with MANY apologies. She said that I had to go move my clip to the "Warning" color block.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!

I do NOT want to move my clip.

I have a clean disciplinary record, and there was NO WAY I wanted it tainted.

So I did what any "reasonable" 2nd grader would do....I cried and begged. I told her that it wasn't my fault--my MOTHER took it out and didn't put it back in. She told me that it was my fault because I didn't do a double-check. Yeah, okay. I see it NOW. But at that moment, those were not the words I wanted to hear. I was so angry with my mom; she SHOULD have told me that she took it out. Mrs. Evard didn't have a shred of sympathy. She KNEW that I was always on time, on task, and a very good student. That day, I would never see her the same.

 

"Young Girl Struck by Sadness" by Pablo Picasso.

Image accredited to Atuleirus

I will never forget her name---Mrs. Evard. On a lighter note, about almost halfway during the school year, she gave birth to her first baby. So we ended up having a "temporary" substitute teacher, Mrs. Houston, who was awesome, nice, and funny. But the only thing was that she became permanent. And that was fine by me. She was 293857239857 times better than Mrs. Evard. So I guess it worked out for me.

 

 

I never thought I'd recover and I thought my whole world was crashing down. It took me a while to get over it. Looking back at it, it's funny how something so small can affect someone and then you realize that what seems like a life-changing event at the moment isn't really in the future. There are so many times in my life where I thought "This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me" -- but it seems like nothing compared to later events.

But this event did change me. I realized that it's okay to make mistakes and to not stress over not absolute perfection all the time. After all, I was just getting a "Warning". But I think I was scared at the thought of my image of the desire for perfection becoming tainted. I admit it was hard to cope with this concept since I was so young--all the values instilled in me by my parents created my own personal high expectations.

Image accredited to iStockPhoto