Nightmaring

Come spring in the 60s, an often-heard trope in the teacher talk at Central Elementary began “IF I pass you to the next grade…” Knowing what I now know about kids (and teachers, for that matter) and spring fever, I doubt that the implied threat, however dire, had a lasting impact on classroom deportment. I do remember, though, that the prospect of having to repeat the year was troublesome. I used to worry about it.

I was relieved when I got my final report card at the end of first grade. It clearly showed that I’d been promoted:

The next year was brutal for a number of reasons; in fact, I didn’t encounter anything quite as harrowing school-wise until my last year of grad school. It’s no surprise that my second grade report card was less than stellar:

(For what it’s worth, I STILL can’t do math and my handwriting is STILL atrocious).

Even more upsetting was the promotion/retention blurb on the back:

What did that mean? My first grade teacher had clearly underlined the happy news about my promotion. But now what? Was the dreaded “continue work in the level he is doing this year” marked out or was it sloppily underlined? I puzzled over those two sentences and that ambiguous mark for weeks. Being me, I internalized my fear and spent the summer in a quiet dither filled with wide-awake nightmares. I absolutely convinced myself that when school started in September (yes, school actually started in September then) we wouldn’t find my name posted outside a third grade classroom. My mother and I would be forced to make a walk of shame back to the second floor of that old, old building where the second grade classes met.

(For the record, I did pass to the third grade and entered the classroom of Mrs. Tate, who is one of my top-five all-time favorite teachers. Things were much better that year).

I now know that my summer of nightmaring was silly. I’m quite sure that even in the 60s retention of a student came only after extensive parent conferences and whatever passed for remedial intervention in those days. That dreaded PLACEMENT NEXT YEAR section of the report card was only a surprise for me. Despite all of those “IF you pass” threats, there was never a potential walk of shame to the second grade hall on the table.

What was earth-shattering in the second grade is fodder for chuckling today. Back then, I certainly never anticipated  that I would one day air the embarrassment of unsatisfactory math and handwriting grades in front of FaceBook and probably all of Google. I never thought that I would openly discuss my secret fear of second-grade failure on the WWW. (I did, however, think that I might one day vacation on the moon; in 1966 we had a different view of the direction that technology would one day take us).

Surely herein is a lesson: I wonder how many of my current daytime nightmares spring from incomplete knowledge, vague marks, and silent suffering? And how many will I laugh about in 50 years?