First grade was my critical year. I'd been deaf the year before, and my communication skills were slowed.
I'm not sure what caused the deafness, but it was probably perforated eardrums resulting from a series of ear infections that were aggravated by adenoiditis. My adenoids and tonsils were removed at age 4 and removed again when they both grew back a year later. I remember excruciating earaches, febrile hallucinations, and the eternal need to throw up. Antibiotics were beginning to be used on the civilian population following World War II, although I don't remember receiving any, but upper respiratory infections are often virus-based, against which antibiotics are useless. To treat symptoms, I received paregoric, an ancient opium-based medicine, but I soon associated its smell with throwing up and so that's what I did with it.
My deafness reached an alarming point when I was in kindergarten, and people had to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. One day, someone visited our home, turned me so I couldn't see him, and apparently tested my hearing by making sounds behind me, none of which I heard. I later watched a serious-faced conversation between the person and my parents.
Yet, I was basically healthy and after the second T and A, the eardrums healed, and I felt better going into first grade, although I lagged behind in communication skills and was thought to have a shy temperament.
Last week, I wrote of the fun I had talking to first-graders at Shawsheen School. They were bright, inquisitive and adorable, and I was impressed by them and their teacher, Susan Infantine, who does a wonderful job with her students. Those kids are all off to a good start, and she's a big part of that.
I too had a crackerjack first grade teacher, Mrs. Jones, and she was there at a perfect time for me, because she expended so much effort working with me that I made up for what I'd lost by the end of the school year. I was lucky she was there at all, because the Andover School Committee had recently changed its policy of insisting that woman teachers be unmarried, and she was one of the first married female teachers hired in Andover. Her husband was a scout for the Boston Braves, a major league baseball team, so there was a special cache attached to her by all the elementary school boys. (Imagine, married to a baseball scout!)
Years ago, among my mother's papers, I found my grade school report cards, including the one from first grade. Marjorie E. Jones was my teacher's full name, and it was not a normal report card that Mrs. Jones sent home; she squeezed 91 words into the 1 3/4 x 4" space for the "Report On Progress of Pupil" section, which was done every two months. I've measured out a piece of paper that size and didn't come close to fitting that number of words in it, but it took me 30 minutes to try. It appears she used the kind of quill pen we students used. Its head was like the head of a fountain pen - the "nib," and it was put on the end of a four inch stick. The nib was dipped in ink every few words to refresh it, and students used blotters to absorb excess ink, but an occasional blob of ink would mar our paper. (You can still buy quill pens and ink - they're sometimes a bit pricey.)
Mrs. Jones wrote, "It sometimes takes [Billy] a bit longer to absorb a new word or fact but once he gets it he retains it." She was being kind. A little further on she noted, "Let's watch the ears," and the word "ears" was underlined. Then she wrote that she watched me carefully when I began to show signs of tiredness, so apparently I was a thought to be a little "sickly," as it was called then. Although I remember being often sick, I would never call myself "sickly." By the end of the first grade, I'd caught up, although I was often absent — 16 times in one two-month period.
I barely remember what Mrs. Jones looked like, but I see the pleasant face of a middle-aged woman in my mind's eye, and I will always remember how kind and patient she was.
How do we thank those teachers, whether few or many, who permanently and positively affect our lives? Not that there aren't bad teachers - there are, of course, because every profession has a continuum of members running from excellent to awful with most being in-between. It's just that some professions, teaching being one, gives the dedicated practitioner the opportunity to occasionally, perhaps frequently, change a life.
I don't know what happened to Mrs. Jones or her husband, the baseball scout, but I'd like to know, although I'm sure it's too late to thank her.
Bill Dalton writes a weekly column for the Andover Townsman. His email address is billdalton@andovertownie.com.
