Running the Grade School Gauntlet

I’ll get the disclaimers out of the way first.

1.) Teachers are incredible. They have undertaken one of the most difficult, thankless jobs in the world. Teachers should be making more money than hedge fund managers, and their schools should be equipped with every amenity and be gloriously free of the need of metal detectors at the school’s perimeter.

2.) I was nine years old when I wrote this. Okay, not really. But I am attempting to put myself into my nine year old brain. (News flash: It’s confusing in there.)

3.) I thought long and hard about changing the names to protect the innocent in this story. Then I pondered the definition of “innocent,” and I came down on the side of the nine year old boy.

4.) My classmates and I sat in the same rooms, next to the same kids, and had the same teachers — but each of us took away very different experiences. Teachers I hated they may have liked (although nine-year-old me can’t imagine why), and the other way around. That’s just the way it works.

5.) The grade-school-aged David Beedle in this story was innocent and afraid of everything. But I doubt I was as innocent as I’ve convinced myself I was. I had my share of getting picked on and mocked, but there were times I did the picking and the mocking. The primal urge to be accepted by the cool kids (an impossible outcome by the way) will do that.

6.) The grown up David Beedle is fully aware he was one of the lucky ones. I had a pretty great childhood.

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Finden, Cox, Reynolds, Ruch, Benner, Fluck, Rogers. Kindergarten through 6^th Grade — they were my teachers at Reinhard Elementary School in Hellertown, Pennsylvania.

Miss Finden was sweet and kind. (Let’s hope so. She was a Kindergarten teacher.) My 1^st grade teacher, Mrs. Cox, was a rolly-polly woman with black hair. At least I think she was. Or was that my next door neighbor? (Give me a break. I was six.)

I will skip 3^rd and 4^th grade for a moment. 

My 5^th grade teacher was Mrs. Fluck. All I can remember about her is her name, because if you removed the letter L from her name, and you were ten years old … I mean … come on.

Sixth grade brought Mr. Rogers. My first teacher who was a man. The other Mr. Rogers showed up on TV that same year, 1968, but the TV Mr. Rogers wasn’t on my radar. All I knew was that my Mr. Rogers was the coolest. At Reinhard school in sixth grade there were only male teachers: Mr. Rogers and Mr. Eardman. It was almost a competition between students as to who they thought was cooler. Mr. Rogers had a Carl Sagan haircut and wore flashy, colorful ties. Some days he wouldn’t even wear a tie at all — choosing instead to don — gasp! — a sweater vest. One time Mr. Rogers played “Blackbird” by the Beatles from the White Album in class. The Beatles. The White Album. In school!

In the waning days of my glorious grade school summer vacations, I remember paging through the afternoon editions of The Bethlehem Globe-Times until the dreaded day that signaled the end of my happy existence for another nine months: The listings of student-teacher assignments at Reinhard School. I’m breaking into a sweat right now just thinking about it. (I wasn’t one of those kids who liked school. You’ll find out why soon.) But on that day in August, only weeks away from 6^th grade, the reporting was good:

YES! Mr. Rogers! Finally something’s gone the right way for David Beedle!

Which leads me back to 3^rd grade. August 1965. When the Globe-Times reported the most devastating news in the history of publishing. Only the reports of the Kennedy Assassination were worse. The news? David Beedle’s 3^rd grade teacher would be … Mrs. Ruch. 

I cried. This is one hundred percent true. Mom had to console me as I sobbed about how horrible that woman, Mrs. Ruch, was. (How horrible? The street that I have lived on for the past thirty-three years is called Ruch Street, and every time I see that street sign I have the urge to petition the township and tell them that it is time for a change.)

The choice of 3^rd grade teachers must have been all the buzz in 2^nd grade as the school year came to a close. Who were the 3^rd grade teachers? What were they like? The questions were meaningless. It didn’t matter who the other third grade teachers were, because the only name on anyone’s lips emerged in this often-repeated sentence: “I just hope I don’t get Mrs. Ruch.” 

I saw her as old, craggy, hunched over, and seven feet tall. A witch. A monster. She wore big orthopedic Frankenstein-like shoes.

“Now David, it can’t be that bad,” Mom said, consoling me, tears smearing the Globe-Times newsprint. But what did Mom know? I knew better.

Then third grade started. And you know what? I have to say … I was RIGHT. 

Mrs. Ruch was horrible. Angry. Never smiling. Frankenstein? You bet. Just like Frankenstein but not as funny. Mrs. Ruch’s weapon of choice was a Bolo Bat. You remember. That paddle toy with a rubber ball attached to it with a rubber band? Well … remove the ball and rubber band … and watch out! 

I picture Mrs. Ruch physically driving her jalopy to the W. T. Grant department store on Main Street, purchasing a gross of Bolo Bats, and gleefully removing the rubber band and ball that had been stapled to the bat using a needle nose pliers, a Camel cigarette hanging from her lips, stopping occasionally to sip whiskey from her coffee cup, while cursing the putrid batch of 3^rd graders she had been saddled with.

I was terrified of Mrs. Ruch, and determined to avoid becoming a victim of the Bolo Bat AT ALL COSTS. So I sat in my seat and shut the hell up. I never raised my hand for fear I would be called upon and answer incorrectly, at which point holy hell would rain down upon me — either via Mrs. Ruch’s verbal assaults, or the dreaded Bolo Bat.

I was one of the lucky ones. I never felt the sting of Mrs. Ruch’s weapon of choice. What I did do was to sit like a lump at my desk in constant fear for nine months. I don’t know which was worse.

Jump ahead to the following August. I am soon to be nine years old, and 4^th Grade is staring me in the face. The choices await as I stare at the afternoon edition of the Globe-Times that rests upon the Beedle doorstep: Will my teacher be Miss Benner? Or the other one? 

Once again I couldn’t tell you the other teacher’s name because, like the rest of us, the other teacher lived in the terrifying shadow of the large, pear shaped, gray-haired woman who wielded a heavy wooden yardstick as well as Mrs. Ruch brandished her Bolo Bat. (And don’t be picturing one of those cheap-o yardsticks you might pick up at Carson’s Hardware that may have well been made of balsa wood. Miss Benner’s yard stick was probably milled at an Oregon lumber yard from a 200 year-old oak tree.) Miss Benner had whiskers.

The once-every-August news cycle doesn’t stop for a 4^th grader in 1966. I opened the paper, and turned to my version of the obituary pages. I read through the notices, and once again, Mom consoled me. I’m not sure if I cried this time … maybe a year under Mrs. Ruch had hardened me. All I knew was that I’d have to spend another school year in a mental foxhole and not get caught in the crossfire generated by Miss Benner’s shrapnel.

I almost made it.

Sometime near the end of 4^th grade, mere months from the end of two nightmare school years, after having successfully run the Battle-Axe Grade School Teacher Gauntlet, I was sucked into what I can only describe as a hellish scheme devised by the Devil himself. Miss Benner was about to lure me (and any other battle-scarred kids who just wanted this crap to be over) out of our foxholes.

Miss Benner, out of the blue, had arranged a “fun time” break where all us kids would learn how to make paper airplanes. Apparently there was more than one way? Who knew? And who knew that Miss Benner had this side to her? My classmates and I looked at each other, dumbfounded. Maybe an alien was inhabiting her body. Or Principal MacPherson had begged her, “Just for one day … BE NICE!” Whatever alternate universe we had entered, we knew we wouldn’t be residing in it for long, so we charged ahead, designing airplanes like Orville and Wilbur at Kitty Hawk, as Miss Benner, almost offhandedly, delivered this bit of instruction:

“Don’t throw your planes until I say so.”

Maybe I was delirious … or having an out-of-body experience. Either way, I let myself get sucked in. This was the NEW Miss Benner! We were making paper airplanes! Did she just smile? I swear, she did! She was a different woman! Kids had crawled out of their mental hiding places. There was smiling … even laughing … as we folded our paper airplane masterpieces. The clouds had lifted! WAR IS OVER!

And I threw my airplane.

And Miss Benner saw it. 

From that eye she had in the back of her head. 

Miss Benner turned, and the two eyes on the front of her face turned steely-gray, and her lips drew taught, and the light streaming through the venetian blinds caught the whiskers on her chin.

“Mr. Beedle!” The class went silent. Miss Benner stood up. With a stubby finger of one hand pointing in my direction, the other hand reached for her weapon: The indestructible yardstick. I am sure I began to whimper. Where the hell was my weapon? Talk about an unfair fight.

I’m sure the whipping hurt. At least I didn’t wet my pants like I had seen happen to one of my friends. I hated Miss Benner. The beatings (don’t ask me to use that soft “paddling” euphemism … I’m nine years old, remember?) weren’t nearly as bad as the mental anguish the timid kids among us had to endure during those dark years of the IRON FIST regimes of Miss Benner and Mrs. Ruch.

The Fourth Grade Paper Plane Fiasco felt like a set up: “I’ll teach you, you miserable nine year olds. You think you’ve escaped learning a lesson from my mighty stick of justice? We’ll see about that.”

At least it was over though, right? It was May. Fifth grade was calling to me like a bright light at the end of a tunnel.

But Mrs. Ruch — yes, Mrs. Ruch from the 3^rd grade — would soon return to button up the school year all nice and proper. And here I thought I’d made a clean getaway from her a year ago. Maybe I was “that one that got away” … a piece of gristle wedged in her yellow teeth.

At Reinhard Elementary School there was a system of moving together as a class in the hallways. We would walk, single file, and when the line reached a set of double doors, the first two kids in line would hold them open and the entire line of kids would walk through. The door holders would then get in the back of the line. 

One fateful day, the third and fourth grade classes were returning from some activity they had done together. Each class did its single-file thing, 3^rd and 4^th grade, marching side-by-side. (Picture this like a war movie … snare drums thrumming softly but menacingly in the background … tension rising.) I am at the front of the fourth grade line. My third grade counterpart and I each hold open a door, and both classes walk through. My counterpart allows his door to close and follows his class into his classroom. And I think, Poor kid, he got stuck with Mrs. Ruch as his teacher.

But hang on a second. My class is also heading into our classroom, along with the wretched Miss Benner. I need to get to the end of that line, but I can’t. Because Mrs. Ruch (Crap! There she is! Mrs. Ruch! The Evil Witch!) is standing in the doorway talking to another teacher. I can’t leave and let the door close. It will smash her orthopedic-shoe-wearing foot.

You would think she’d notice me: this kid … holding the door … separated from his fellow schoolmates who are quickly disappearing into his classroom along with his teacher … a teacher who has a yardstick leaning against her desk … and who possesses an itchy trigger finger.

But Mrs. Ruch couldn’t give a rat’s ass. The classroom door has closed and I’m out there on my own, holding open that stupid door. She keeps on talking to the other teacher. Chat, chat, chat. You’d think maybe the OTHER teacher in the conversation would say something. Both of them have to know.

(You think I’m making this up, but I’m not.)

Now I’ve got a decision to make. You would think after two years of running the Battle-Axe Gauntlet I would have gained the skills to make the correct decision: “Mrs. Ruch? Excuse me, it’s me, David Beedle. You remember me, right? I’m sorry to interrupt, but I am going to be late for class.” Yes, that would have been the right decision for a battle-tested veteran of the 3^rd and 4^th grades. Unfortunately, I spent those two years hiding in foxholes, trying to be invisible, wishing I could just tiptoe away while saying nothing. (Quietly tiptoeing away: THAT’S my go-to move.)

I take one last look at the shoe planted firmly next to the open door … and I tell myself I have no choice. And I do it. My go-to move. I let go of the door handle and walk as fast as I can down the hall to my classroom. Since I don’t have an eye in the back of my head, I can only imagine the scene playing out behind me: The door closing, achingly slow, toward it’s final target: Mrs. Ruch’s size twelve orthopedics. Blindsided by the kid that got away while in the midst of what surely must be a discussion of vital importance.

What have I done? I have just committed a colossal error!

I don’t know how I got from that hallway to my seat without incurring the wrath of Miss Benner, there at her desk at the front of class, and Mrs. Ruch, still out in that hallway. I must have blacked out on my feet. Who was I to question it, though? There I was. In my seat. Class underway. Some how I made it. Home free.

Then the classroom door opens. 

And Mrs. Ruch stomps in. “Where is David Beedle?” Her voice is like a cawing crow, and she is coming down on me like the grade school version of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. “What kind of child are you? How can you be so inconsiderate? How could you let that door close on two women having a conversation?” She is seething. And she is enjoying it, I’m sure, as the entire class watches the 3^rd grade teacher berate the fourth grader in front of his entire class. 

There was no wielding of the dreaded bolo bat, no borrowing of Miss Benner’s yardstick. But it didn’t matter. The shaming of David Beedle was quite enough.

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I don’t know how to end this story. I find it hard to fathom that kids once got whipped by teachers with bolo bats and yardsticks. Those whippings … or even just the threat of them … did nothing except to frighten me. And not just of traversing the Battle-Axe Gauntlet.

Fifth grade arrived. I don’t remember anything about my teacher, or anything else about that school year. Maybe I needed that time to decompress — like coming up slowly from the depths of the ocean so you don’t get the bends.

And then sixth grade came. And Mr. Rogers was my teacher. And the sun shined. And the music played. And the students smiled.