Chalk It Up To Experience
‘don’t use that tone of voice
young man’
grade seven
the visiting maths teacher
the one the guys in the class
called blubber boobs
oh oh blubber boobs this afternoon
hope she can see my homework
over those blubber boobs of hers
she came to our school three times a week
Miss Dunlop
we also had a Mrs. DeMoine
who came twice a week
to teach us French
we called her Madam to her face
and Mizdammit behind her back
Miss Dunlop was another story
with her small waist
and gigantic breasts
she was berating me
I hadn’t written my homework
in the strict form she required
I can’t remember my reply
nor can I recall my tone of voice
perhaps I had slipped into
that school yard sexual intonation
we used when talking about her
erasing the blackboard with her boobs
there’s chalk on them there hills
I stood silent before her
after she ordered me
not to use that tone of voice
I couldn’t even apologize
not knowing how to control
how I sounded
I did know it was pointless
to ague with her
like my mother
winning wouldn’t get me anywhere
all I’d prove
was that I was a smart mouth
not that I was smart
Miss Dunlop taught me well
it’s better to be thought stupid
than it is to prove a pointless point
This is the 4th of the saṃghādisesas. It practically wrote itself. School memories are usually great to revisit, even the unpleasant ones. This one was more embarrassing than unpleasant. Like many of these ‘true to life’ pieces it is a composite of different moments as I struggled through school. Not all of them were in Grace seven.
In Cape Breton many schools had travelling special teachers for things like maths, art, music & French. Usually female, young & sometimes pretty. Each brought different routines, different disciplinary tactics – that usually involved getting one of the male teachers to tell us to behave. The guys would always joke about these teachers breasts or lack of them. The bigger the boob the greater the respect for some reason.
I was told, more than once, to watch the tone of my voice, but many of the guys got the same command too. As I say here I just didn’t know what was meant as I couldn’t hear myself talking and once I was told to watch my tone I couldn’t hear anything else for at least ten minutes. Being singled out never helped my focus or ability to absorb information.
Being made so self-conscious opting for silence was the only choice I could think of at the time. Confrontation would only result in one of the male teachers, or the vice-principal, being called for to keep us all in line. The vice-principal was prone to giving the entire class detention not just the ‘smart mouth.’ So keeping my mouth shut was as much due to peer pressure than anything else.
One result was that I became very dismissive of my actual voice. I hated to hear recordings of myself. If you’ve been one of the fortunate ones who have seen me perform you know I got over that 🙂
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