Catholic School Part III: 2nd Grade: Trust and Respect
Mrs Sanders was a younger, nicer teacher, and I liked to talk to her. During the class time allotted for homework (an eternal 3 hours or so straight) I would come up to her desk and tell her little jokes or just little things I thought of. She humored me but she knew what I was avoiding.
We did spelling homework out of a big workbook. We did our 2-3 page assignment, and then the next day we would grade them as a class. She would call out the answers and we would grade our assignments ourselves. Then, at the end of class, we would call out our scores one by one and she would write them down.
One day I looked down and realized that I hadn't done the assignment. Realizing that no one ever looked at anyone else's workbook, I simply waited as the assignment was graded, and called out my score as 100. I did it the next week, and I think for several weeks. This sort of unresolvable tension began to build in me. I wanted to do my homework, but I could hardly bring myself to when I knew there was no consequence to skipping it. I started to get a little crafty...like, I would occaisionally throw in 98's and 97's to keep from arousing suspicion.
To this day I don't know how I got caught. She must have just read my workbook one day and seen that the last several weeks worth of homework were missing. My parents broke the news to me, and I think they were pretty nice about it, but I just remember feeling so, so, so busted. At one point they said, "You'll really have to work hard to win back Mrs. Sanders' trust and respect". That really hit me hard for some reason. I just felt like the world had ended.
I was so melodramatic...I remember pretending I was asleep and then tossing and turning and repaeatedly murmuring the words "trust and respect, trust and respect" in my sleep in the hopes that my parents would come by in the hall, concerned, and call Mrs. Sanders the next day and tell her that I was tortured by my sins and their consequences even in my dreams. I don't think this happened, and eventually I got tired and went to sleep.