Pin People
This is one of those strange memories where certain parts of it are very clear and others are….errrrr?……….how could that be?
In the 5th grade, in Tucson, AZ – my friend Keith Singer and I worked on a special project that was enthusiastically approved by our teacher, Mr. Crowley. Mr. Crowley had a very 70’s beard and 70’s feathered hair and I alternately loved and hated him.
For example, I loved him the month of October when he read “Charlotte’s Web” aloud to the class every day after lunch. I couldn’t wait every day to hear what would happen next to Wilbur and Fern and Charlotte … he had this beautiful deep bass voice…
I hated him in December when, as a Christmas present to our parents, (even though our class was at least 50 percent Jewish) he brought in his fancy camera and took our pictures and taught us to develop the pictures ourselves and write a little poem directly on the picture. Except, when my picture was developed – my bangs were sticking STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR and everyone laughed and I cried the whole rest of the day and fought myself internally over ripping the picture to shreds…. and having nothing to give my mom……or just sucking it up. I never forgave him for taking my picture without telling me that I looked like a moron. “Why would you take my picture like that?!”, I asked him over and over… it’s only now as a grown woman that I understand how a man wouldn’t necessarily think anything of a girl’s bangs sticking straight up.
I loved him again in February when he held up my pink, red and white tissue paper decorated shoebox and declared it the “Winner!” of the Valentine Mailbox Decorating Contest and presented me with a small box of conversation hearts.
I hated him again in the spring. After warning me at least 100 times that I needed to clean up my desk, which actually was so messy that I couldn’t get it closed. You know, those angled flip-top kind… papers hung out the sides of mine and I had so many books inside that it was raised in such an uneven way that my things were constantly sliding and falling off my desk… and he just snapped. Walked over to my desk in the middle of math, ordered me up and out of my desk, picked my desk up… walked to the front of the classroom and TIPPED MY ENTIRE DESK UPSIDE DOWN IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. Then ordered me down on my knees to clean the whole thing up in front of all my classmates…oh god.. the horror… don’t cry.. don’t cry… don’t cry…. I tried to flip him off when his back was turned but I don’t think anyone saw it, which basically nullifies its effects, anyway…
The hatred was pure at that point. I used to daydream that he would be bitten by snakes.
Suddenly…. end of year…. and Keith Singer and I are working on our “project” – which was to create an entire house… furniture… food… clothing…lives… for a set stickpins. We used mostly cardboard, wire and construction paper… and we’d sit out in the hall for hours working on it. I don’t remember coming up with the idea… or proposing it to Mr. Crowley. I don’t remember what we were supposed to learn from it or if it was graded… but I remember hours of hallway sitting, laughing and talking with Keith while we folded little paper beds, with little paper sheets and made paper tables with paper placemats and paper chicken with paper cake…. folded wire into little hairbrushes and forks…
Keith was great fun – he didn’t like playing with the boys and didn’t “like LIKE” girls – (I’m not sayin’, I’m just saying…. I mean, the kid could have been a late bloomer – I was 12 when I last saw him.)
I can’t remember what happened to The Pin House… I can’t believe we’d put in all that work and just leave it there… maybe Keith’s mom has it?
These half-memories drive me nuts.
Like so many of my childhood memories, I can often remember what I did and who I did it with — but not for the life of me why I thought it was a good idea, in the first place…