grade school blues

in grade school, back in my day, when we would get report cards, the teacher would handwrite your grades in scholarship and citizenship and then, make an earnest snippet of character appraisal of each pupil in neat, post-WWII babymaking boom-era cursive penmanship.

stylized pigeonhole judgements--made when you were 9-years-old and your personality was emerging into its destined formation while you played Foursquare, Dodgeball, and Unicorns with reckless abandon on the liminal cusp of tween-hood, a blink before adolescence and a semi-forgotten dream away from childhood--those reportcard judgements contain raw truths waiting to be unhusked and polished into a pearlescent grain of rice with your name improbably imprinted on it.

is one's destiny written in the stars by celestial beings and ancestral spirits? or is your destiny sincerely scripted on canary cardstock by pretty Mrs. O'Neill of the overflowing sympathy and coiffed ringlet mullet while you sat with your desk facing the wall on Movie Friday puzzling over a weeks' worth of overdue homework?

[Mrs. O'Neill if ever you come across this, i own up to being a delinquent GATE kid. as my sister said, it was challenging carrying around that big brain o'mine. so i have to admit to the petty theft of books. The Yearling and Professor Diggin's Dragons, i believe. i spose i ought to feel remorseful and ought to send you a copy, wherever you are, but ehhh, i don't and i won't.]

sigh. as ever...

Bright, but does not apply herself.