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Summer is on the wane here in California. Schools are starting up, sycamore's leaves are looking a little lacy and tired their bark all shed now white and smooth and cool to the touch. Some trees are even shedding leaves now late into the dry summer and neighbors are beginning that fall ritual of raking.
I'm looking forward to the fall weather and we get little hints of it now. Short stretches of temps in the 80's with crystal skies and wispy clouds of ocean water high up forecasting a change. Yet still for another month the heat will come but it will be shorter and less striking between the sycamore shadows than it was a month ago.
I remember the sense of loss that summer ending caused me as a child. The free days of waking late, camping, swimming and hiking and trips to the mall on my bike suddenly ended with a trip to the store for school clothing, pencils and Pee-Chee folders. Waking up got heavier each morning as the expectations of the school year began to stack up against the glorious last few days of freedom.
My friends and I would make the most of the last days of summer, those days when the sun's lower slant gave hints that soon the bells would ring and we'd be stuck again in the stale classroom air with rigid desks and expectations would replace the swampy frog-filled creeks and bicycle coasting hills of my summer. I always felt a sense of mourning for summer's end. It was the loss of fellowship that school could never match.
One of my favorite memories of starting school was my freshman year of high school. I had to travel by bus eight miles or more to get there even though another high school was a school much closer. The new development where we lived had caused overcrowding and we so we were bussed away.
The distance made it seem like we were travelling to a foreign land where foreign teachers with unknown identities added to the mystery of my admission. My friends and I collected our schedules and met in the Quad to look them over and discuss the unknown names and classes. Some boys with more knowledge of the teachers looked our schedules over and when they peered at mine they exclaimed that I was a dead man. My English teacher was notoriously tough, a woman named Mrs. Beaubien. I quaked at the thought of a year of endless homework assignments. I didn't have her class until after lunch so all through the morning I'd ask people I met if Beaubien was as bad as I'd been told. Looks of sadness and pity often accompanied the affirmation that in this school of over 3000 students with hundreds of teachers, Beaubien stood alone in student intimidation.
And so I ate my lunch, I think, I may have given it away. I'm sure if I did eat it I didn't taste a bite and it must have sat souring in my stomach as I waited for the bell that surely tolled my doom and the piteous ending of a short but brilliant high school term. The bell rang, and off I trudged toward the assigned room where my executioner awaited. I left to the catcalls of my "friends" who by now had warmed to the task of preparing me appropriately for the noose. Gallows humor prevailed throughout lunch and I fully expected to die on the spot from Mrs. Beaubien's acid glare.
I had never seen the woman before so I didn't know how many heads she had or if her scales were silver or green but I was certain her looks would be a frightening as her grading policy. All of the other poor condemned souls filed into the chamber of horrors and each sat in the furthest seat available from the front of the room, nobody was willing to sit directly in the line of fire. We slumped in our seats and the podium was empty and its fearful shellacked potency wasn't lost on the sullen teenagers.
The bell rang and still no teacher and our hopes were raised just slightly that she had forgotten us, or had been recalled, or that a bumbling, rumpled substitute would amble in and tell us funny stories and give us meaningless homework. But this was not our lucky day, this was a day of reckoning and each of us had piles of scholastic sins to pay for and our angel of death was clicking smartly down the cement sidewalk in the hallway outside.
We heard her coming and a chill settled over the room and thirty sets of eyes scanned the open doorway as the shiny high heels ticked closer. The bright doorway that suddenly darkened as a tall, graying sturdy woman in a navy blue skirt and jacket entered without looking at the students half of whom had a sudden urge to bolt out the door before it was sealed and the other half wishing they'd taken the time at lunch to visit the restroom. I found myself in both camps.
She strode quickly to the podium and towered over it. She grasped three or four books she was carrying under her right arm, lifted them above the podium and allowed them to slam down on its wooden platform causing a drum-like boom that rolled out across the rank and file before her and caused us all to snap to out of out teen slumps to attention. All thirty heads erect and eyes focused unblinking on our greatest fear, Dr. Dorothy Beaubien. She was magnificent behind the podium.
Her iron gaze appraised us all as she scanned her new recruits carefully. I knew that she could see my lack of grammatical control, she could see my lack of homework discipline, and she could see my sloppy penmanship. Dr. Beaubien saw it all and I felt exposed.
After her wilting scan of the students Dr. Beaubien turned and wrote her name on the chalkboard then returned to the podium and white-knuckle-gripped the sides of it with her strong hands and said, "I am Dr. Beaubien. Everything you've heard is true."
The axe fell on us, the noose tightened, and each of us shrunk down teeny-tiny in our chairs as Dr. Beaubien confirmed our darkest fears and forever cinched the Gordian knots in our gut. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I think several of the girls began weeping; but then, it may have been me.
Postmortem:
Dr. Beaubien was as hard on us as she promised to be. She demanded excellence. She wanted us to learn how to write well, think clearly and express our ideas. Although I only had her as a teacher for one year, I can honestly say that she was one of the finest teachers I ever had and she had more influence on my writing than any teacher before or after her. Dr. Beaubien did have an annoying habit of slamming books on the podium and yelling "wake up!" when she was frustrated by our post-lunch doldrums. Dr. Beaubien never suffered laziness or fools gladly.
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