C. S. Lewis once said, “You cannot get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to satisfy me.” I feel exactly the same way – except that I would trade that tea for coffee, preferably Starbucks..
The summer of 1964 was a time of great wishing and hoping in the small town of Senatobia, Ms, where I grew up. Back then, kids didn’t find out who their teacher for the coming year would be until the first day of school when everyone gathered in the auditorium. The teacher would stand by the door and the principle, Mr. Monroe, would assign the class by calling the names of the children in that class. The teacher would then lead her class to their classroom. There were only two sections of each grade in our small city school. Both of our first grade teachers were wonderful, loving teachers. We also loved our second grade teachers. But, when it came to third grade, there was one teacher that was feared above all others – Miss Gillespie.
About as round as she was tall, Miss Gillespie was famous for being stern. She wore her gray hair pulled back sternly from her face; her gray and black horn rimmed glasses magnified stern gray eyes; she wore gray, blue or black dresses that were always belted with a small black belt below which a straight skirt fell almost to her ankles. She always wore red lipstick that was always painted straight across the bottom of her face – or it appeared that way since she never smiled. The thing I remember most about her – she always wore laced up, black, wingtipped-looking “old lady” shoes and you could hear her coming down the hall way before you ever saw her.
The day finally came and we were nervously waiting for the third graders to be called. Ricky, Charlotte, Susan, Rhonda, John … my friends raced to the front to stand behind Miss Connie. Surely, my name would be called next. Mr. Monroe would not put ME in Miss Gillespie’s room!! The list of Miss Connie’s lucky kids was finished and she marched them out of the auditorium to a third grader’s idea of heaven – a whole school year with one of the best teachers at Senatobia Elementary.. I looked around the large room to find that not only were the remaining third graders looking pretty afraid, our mommas were just about as upset.
For the first few weeks in Miss Gillespie’s class, I did not say a word. I’m was thinking that if I just laid low and glided through the year, I’d be okay.
Miss Gillespie’s classroom was her domain. It was unlike any other classroom in the school. One whole side of the room was made up of floor- to- ceiling, wooden windows with the blinds pulled up to the ceiling. Crowded in front of the windows were about a million potted plants of all types. Large, colorful plants with blooming flowers and small creepy looking ferns. This jungle only added to our feeling of isolation and fear. Miss Gillespie might have been the devil in disguise, but the woman had a green thumb.
The very first rule she barked to us was this: Do NOT EVER touch any of those plants.
Second rule: You will sit where I tell you to sit and nowhere else. Of course, my seat was right in the middle of all those plants.
One day I was looking at those plants, daydreaming, I'm sure, when I noticed a small red pepper growing on one of the plants. I watched that pepper for days until finally I could stand it no longer. I picked the pepper and put it in my pencil box. Occasionally I would take it out and look at it. After playing with the pepper one day, I put it under my desk and started my assignments. I remember that the assignment was to draw a bird. I noticed a small itchy feeling in my right eye. I absentmindedly scratched my eye. Next thing I knew, my eyes were burning like crazy, tears flooding down my face, crying like a baby. Keeping my head down, I was desperate to hide my discomfort from Miss Gillespie. Barely able to open my eyes beyond a slit, I was focused on the floor when I saw the familiar wingtipped toe of a tightly laced, black shoe standing right in front of my desk. “Did you touch one of the peppers on that pepper plant?” Miss Gillespie demanded.
I then made a decision that would affect me for the rest of my life. I lied. “No ma'am,” I whispered. “What?” she asked, not believing that I would dare lie to her.
I couldn’t say anything else. I could barely breath and I could not keep my eyes open. Miss Gillespie sent me to Mr. Monroe’s office who called my mother to come pick me up.
The next morning I had a new seat – front row, square in front of Miss Gillespie’s desk. We also started a new routine that day – a daily reading of Laura Wilder’s Little House On the Prairie. Miss Gillespie would pull a stool up to the front of the class and read to us each day right after lunch from Little House. We went through the entire series that year and with each reading, I fell more and more in love with books. Since I had such a great seat for the reading, I also slowly started to understand my teacher a little better. I could see plainly how much she loved reading and how she wanted all of us to enjoy reading also. I was totally enthralled with that series of books and could not wait until the 30 minutes after lunch each day that we spent with Laura Ingalls and her family. I went on to read two other series of books that year, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
Miss Gillespie instilled in me the love and respect for the written word. Because of her, I have been all over the world and in countless dramas – in the thousands of books that I have read. I learned that year that I could grab a book, go sit in my mother's car and get away from my younger sister and two younger brothers. I could go anywhere, do anything, be anybody and get lost in a book. That year with Miss Gillespie, I learned to love books. More importantly, I learned that you really cannot judge a book by its cover. Looking back, I now know that Miss Gillespie was one of the best teachers I ever had.
