Mother's Day 2017 - Remembering My First Mentor

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Anna Jarvis is a name that most people are not too familiar with.  She had an idea in the year of 1908 to hold a memorial for her mother at her church.  She began a campaign to have a special holiday declared for mothers.  The Congress, using the thought processes that have made them famous up until this day, refused to declare a holiday for mothers because they felt they would next have to declare a holiday for mothers in law.  In 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as a national holiday to honor mothers.  

This was all very good and the Hallmark company entered into the fray. They realized that there was money to be made with this sentiment for mothers and they developed a line of Mother's Day cards.  Anna Jarvis was not pleased with Hallmark as she was of the opinion that people should write personal notes to their mother on this special day instead of relying on artificial words penned by professional sentiment peddlers.  The commercialization of the holiday she lobbied for annoyed her so much that she organized boycotts of Mother's Day, and we know how that turned out!

My mother, Violet, has passed from this life.  She was a good woman and did her best with me in my youth.  I was a bit of a problem child in that I suffered from what today would have been diagnosed with a learning disability.  I had one heck of a hard time understanding math.  Back then, my teachers all said that I was not working up to my potential while in fact, I was and I just did not understand certain mathematical concepts. My mind was sluggish when it came to numbers but I routinely tested two grades higher in my reading and reading comprehension skills so I was no dummy.  But I was also very frustrated.  What follows is a chapter from my book, "Glimpses of God" in which you will hear about the world I inhabited in fourth grade.  You will see the role my mother played and she taught me a lesson that I carry with me to this very day.  I know it is kind of long and you may not want to read the whole thing, although I think you will be amused if you do, I have marked in bold the relevant paragraph if you want the express version. 

Every September was a new start. I had new shoes, a new haircut, fresh paper, sharp pencils, new BIC pens, you know the kind that they shoot through two by fours and they still write. I also had a never been used three ring binder with factory fresh paper but most of all at least for the first few days of school I carried a new attitude promising myself that I would do better in school and would claw my way by hook or crook out of the dummy tank. The September I started fourth grade I came into the game with all of these things, fresh from vanquishing Sister Emerita and her letter writing campaign and ready to take on the challenge of a new school year. In every era, some disasters make the headlines. In the beginning of the century there was the sinking of the Titanic, later there was crash and burning of the Hindenburg and still later great earthquakes that destroyed cities in Alaska. For me the stage was set for a disaster that for me would dwarf those disasters. The actors were ready and fate shouted; “Action.” Then enter stage left we see Mrs. R. Read. Mrs. R. Reid was a middle-aged teacher of average build who camouflaged her true self with rosy cheeks and a nice smile. She dressed in sixties teacher style and her hair were always coifed in a bun. That nice smile was there to draw you in, sort of the way a cobra will attempt to hypnotize its prey before striking and consuming it. You would have thought that as a lay teacher she would not have had access to the teacher’s pet list since she did not live in the close confines of the convent, but she apparently did obtain a copy of the list and the favored few of third grade continued their reign of blackboard erasing, handing out of papers and putting the names of people who talked while teacher was out of the room in her fourth grade kingdom. 

Mrs. R. Reid was the empress in her domain. Other teachers both nuns and lay teachers alike held sway in their kingdoms but Mrs. R. Reid was an absolute despotic monarch over hers. She was an absolute disciplinarian and was quite inventive in the punishments she could come up with. As the school year progressed, my good intentions and my good attitudes started to decay very quickly melting as if it were a pyramid of sugar caught in a drenching rainstorm. 

Early in the year, she passed out a small envelope containing twenty-five small slips of colored paper. She explained that these were tickets and we would receive some tickets when we did what we were told and we would lose some tickets when we failed to make good. You did not get tickets for doing your homework, that was a requirement and besides since her lectures were so fascinating you would want to rush home to eagerly complete each assignment and therefore it followed that finishing the assignment would be its own reward. No, you received tickets for doing things like erasing the blackboard, handing out papers, putting the names of people who talked on the blackboard and by bringing in Betty Crocker Coupons. So right from the start, you could see that the tables were tilted towards the teachers’ pets. About the only thing I could hope to get tickets for would be to bring in Betty Crocker Coupons. I guess these were coupons on the top of Betty Crocker products such as cake and cookie mixes that could be exchanged for premiums. Mom’s back then mostly stayed at home and had time to do things like baking. Unfortunately for me my mother, when she did bake, did not use Betty Crocker products. She used Jiffy Mix products. Betty proudly sold her wares for fifty-nine cents while Jiffy Mix sold for just a dime at the Hi Lo store on Kedzie Avenue. With three kinds consuming food and tuition money not to mention the general upkeep of the kids, there just was no contest in our house as to which products would be used. There were other ways to earn tickets which I cannot bring to mind, but I was able to get some of the valuable pieces of scrap paper but never really enough to exchange for pens, paper, or other supplies you could use them for and during the annual World’s Finest Chocolate sale ten tickets would get you a square of chocolate or three chocolate covered almonds and if I wasn’t being punished, I would dole out three of the valuable tickets just so I could wrap my lips around some of those almonds, mmmm! You also were paid tickets for selling chocolate or Christmas cards or whatever they decided we were selling that year. We will talk more about these yearly sales in a little while. The ticket system, while not completely fair is not the reason why to this day I have a dislike for Mrs. R. Reid. The year I had with her as a teacher changed me as a person and for the longest time, not for the better. 

Mrs. Reid’s fourth-grade class was relegated to a basement room which was not as nice as the regular rooms on the first three floors. There were exposed pipes, probably wrapped with asbestos. I think that it was kind of poetic justice that Mrs. R. Reid would hold court in the dungeon- like atmosphere of the basement. I have to be fair to her. I know that out there are people that will say that she was a fine teacher and the best that they ever had. Luckily for me, this is not their autobiography so I need not consider their opinion. Never since Mrs. Reid have I had a teacher that was so outstanding in unfairness. She had considerable ability to classify children into rigid categories which they were never allowed to escape from. Thus, once I was placed into her “dummy” category, I was there in her eyes for life. She never would call on a dummy in class unless she absolutely knew she could embarrass you because she knew there was no way that you knew the answer. Please understand that I am not saying that she only treated me this way, no, out of the forty or so kids there were about four others occupying the dunce classification, and she never called on a dummy for anything. Even in my fourth-grade mentality, I knew this was unfair. Let’s face it, folks, even a real dyed in the wool dummy just might have a correct answer now and then. With Mrs. Reid, I did more homework. Not all of it mind you, but more of it than I did for that great teacher and potential winner of the Nobel Prize, Sister Emerita, whom, when I compared her to Mrs. R. Reid, I loved and admired so very much. The reason I did homework for her is because there was a penalty if you did not do it. The penalty was you had to write your multiplication tables from 1 X 1 to 12 X 12, doing this once was considered one penalty. I don’t know if I am clear about what a penalty was, you would start with 1 X 1= 1, next line 1X2=2, all the way up to 1X12=12. Then you would go up to the top of the page again and in a second column start with 2X1=2 next line 2X2=4 etc continuing until you got to 12X12=144. While I was never able to amass a fortune in tickets because I lacked Betty Crocker coupons, I was able to become a virtual millionaire in the penalties. If you wanted penalties, I was the guy to see. At one time I remember I had amassed five hundred opportunities to write my time's tables. I was an expert so let me tell you that you can fit all of the times tables from 1 X 1 to 12 X 12 on both sides of one sheet of paper. Each penalty had to be on a separate piece of paper, so we were buying lots of five whole punch notebook paper that year! About now you may be thinking; “Why didn’t Dofus just avoid penalties by turning in the homework?” That is a good question, I am glad you asked. Although my grades in fourth grade were better than in third and I was turning in more of the homework, I was still failing badly at New Math, once again I just could not understand it and back then I had a very low threshold for frustration. I accumulated penalties because I seldom turned in my Math homework and was awarded five penalties each time I missed an assignment. Once I tried turning in the worksheet from the workbook with my name on it and nothing else, but that earned me a bonus penalty, she really did go over the papers! Then as time went on the frustration got even greater and I did less and less of the assignments. Mind you, when it came to passing tests say for English and History, there was little problem for me. I was a good reader. 

Mrs. R. Reid, unlike the beloved and saintly Sister Emerita, was no letter writer; she would have her revenge on me and once the decision was taken without hesitation she went straight for the jugular vein and used that modern invention called the telephone. One day Mrs. Reid left the room for a few moments right after I told her my Math homework sadly would not be arriving in her inbox that day. She stared at me for a moment and she smiled, but it was a smile that sent shivers up and down my spine. One of her pets was stationed at the blackboard to take down the names of anyone who talked and she left the room. She was gone for a few minutes and then came back and started the lesson. About fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door and the principal Sister Victoria motioned for Mrs. Reid to come into the hall. After Mrs. Reid stationed her snitch, she called me to follow her. I went out in the hall and there with Sister Victoria was my mother. Mrs. Reid had called her and she came down for a conference. In front of my mother and Sister Victoria, Mrs. Reid asked me straight out if I had my math homework to turn in today. I said no and she told me to go back into the room and put my name on the board for not having my homework. She was big at putting people’s names on the blackboard. I think that she thought that shame of having your name on the board would cause you to do your best to turn in your work. It didn’t work in my case, I was used to it. I hung my head and slowly went back into the room and walked to the usual spot on the board and with my classmates giggling at me, only Dennis in the back refused to laugh or giggle, I wrote my name on the board and shuffled to my seat. Believe it or not, this, as I reflected on it later in life, gave me a glimpse of God. I thought of the shame Jesus felt as he carried the cross to Calvary, not that I can compare my not doing homework to his work on the Cross for us but the feeling of eyes upon you knowing that they were looking you with scorn really hit home. It turned out that I would be turning in all of my assignments from that day on. We all carried a green assignment pad and wrote down the homework assignments in it. My book was only slightly used at that point. By the end of the year, it would become well used and dog-eared. At the end of every day, I would have to bring my assignment notebook to Mrs. Reid and she would have to certify that I had written down all of my homework assignments. One day I forgot to bring it to her and she forgot to sign the book and I knew I would be in trouble. I decided that there was no harm in forging her signature since I had all of the assignments written down. I practiced her signature a couple of times and got it exactly right. I can still sign her name better than she could. If you could compare my rendering to one of the genuine ones in the assignment book, you would maybe see some very small variations, but no one, not my parents nor Mrs. Reid ever stumbled on to the fact that I forged her name. I only did it once, on a Friday so the next week’s assignments would begin on a new page. Mark down one point for me!

Violet Spoula
Someone tried to "colorize: this photobooth picture, not me! 

At this impromptu powwow that Mrs. Reid called between her and my mother, one good thing actually came out of it, while not a glimpse of God, it was a life lesson that I will remember for the rest of my life. When I got home, instead of the expected, and because of my slothful ways well deserved dressing down, my mother told me that she had noticed that when I was going to the blackboard to write my name, I had my head hung down low. She told me that I should always be proud of whom I was and no matter what I had the dignity that came with just being who I was no matter what so I should always hold my head up high. I remembered that lesson from that day on and although things would happen in my youth and in adulthood and I would get in trouble again and have to put my name on the board, I would always remember the wisdom she spoke on that day and now I remember that no matter what that I should be proud just to be me. 

I spent the rest of the school year doing homework and times tables. I eventually got all of my penalties done, but it took hours and hours. I did really know my time's tables by the end of the year! The way she made me feel small, the teasing from other kids, the pressure I felt because I felt dumb and alone caused me to start biting my fingernails. Mrs. Reid was on this like a great white shark would take to meat. She tried her best to get me to stop, but it was a compulsion that was not under my control. Doctors today say that this disorder called Chronic Onychophagia is caused by stress and anxiety. Mrs. Reid, for me, was THE local distributor of stress and anxiety. I carried my nail biting habit all the way up until my freshman year in high school; it was an embarrassment and more cause for kids to tease me. On rainy days we would have lunch recess inside. Our class would have it in our classroom. We played this game where five kids would stand in front of the class and we would put our heads down and our thumbs up and the five in front would circulate through the room and push a kids thumb down and go back to the front of the room. We then were told to pick our heads up and those that had their thumbs pushed down would stand up and try to guess who pushed their thumb down. What a fascinating game huh? One time I had a turn-up front and pushed down the thumb of Patricia Glowacki, a notorious teacher’s pet, and blackboard writing snitch. She immediately guessed it was me that tagged her and we were allowed to ask how she was able to guess correctly. She said, “Your finger was wet Ewwww.” The class laughed and I was mortified. But we digress here. In the long run, I am glad that I had this nail-biting disorder. I think that as I grew and saw other people with things wrong with them, I was able to empathize and sympathize more with them. In the long run, I guess my Chronic Onychophagia was a good thing. 

On the last day of school, the pastor came and handed out report cards. There was some question as to if I was going to go on to the fifth grade or not. The pastor called me up looked at my card, shook his head discreetly and wordlessly handed it to me. I went back to my desk and opened it; “Promoted to Grade Five.” Oh, remember we started the year with that little envelope of twenty-five tickets? Well, I have to tell you that is about the same number of now valueless tickets that I threw in the wastebasket as one of the pets brought it around as we cleaned our desks for the last time. God was showing me through Mrs. R. Reid that things of this earth would over time lose their value. Who would think that there was that much power in some scrap paper? What a Glimpse of God this was and it really came from a most unlikely source; thank you, Mrs. R. Reid. With my report card in my hand, I realized something else. Oh, Joy! Oh, Rapture! I was FREE so I sayFarewell to the old Mrs. R. Reid, I hardly knew thee!

Commercial Time: My autobiography, "Glimpses of God" is available through Amazon.com - type "spoula" as the search term. 

So, on this very special day that we set aside to honor our mother, I just want to encourage you to be grateful for your mother and to remember her not only on this day but during the whole year. 

For Violet, I pray, my dear mother, that you have found the rest and the joy you never seemed to be able to find in life.  I love you and miss you very much.  You worked wonders with me Mom, I think I grew up to be a good reflection of all that was good in you.