I am more right-brained than anyone I have met.
Being left-handed goes along with this and my dyslexia.
An old-maid old-school old-faced teacher decided to fix me.
I was forced to wear a thumb-less mitten on my left hand.
Thanks Mom, thanks Miss Kneeland, first grade teacher.
After a year I tried to be right handed, but I never felt right-handed.
In these days children are allowed to be right and left handed.
I envy them. I wish I could have been one of them.
On a happier note, I can type faster than anyone I have ever known.
My mother mentioned casually that I was dyslexic.
This was something I had forgotten.
I knew I had to wear a glove for a year of first grade
To force me to not use my left dominant hand.
But I had forgotten the hours I spent after school with Miss Kneeland.
Miss Kneeland was an old maid school teacher
Who had already taught my father and his brother Jerry.
They were also dyslexic, so she knew what she was dealing with.
I had spent hours after school with her in first grade
As she taught me to see my reading words the way others saw them.
She used a mirror, and until I saw them with the mirror,
they were squiggles that made little sense.
It was a struggle I had long forgotten,
I have never fully recovered from wearing a one compartment mitten
On my left hand, so I could not use my left hand for a year.
This was also Miss Kneeland’s idea, so I could be right handed.
He was my best friend
I trusted him
not to fall in love with me
I was young, I did not want to be in love
He was, and I wish he had kept it a secret
He didn’t
It nearly ruined our relationship
I was six, he was seven
He kissed me on the playground
Miss Kneeland, our teacher, an old maid, was askance
He told her”It’s okay Miss Kneeland. When I grow up
I am going to marry her.”
I was mad as hops for a long time.
We became friends again my sophomore year.
He was a junior.
He was my best friend.
I trusted him not to fall in love with me.
But he did anyway.
I kept telling him I was not old enough to be in love.
I told him this until winter break my first year of college.
When we both returned home I could not keep my hands off of him.
That is when I knew
That I loved him too.
October 1958
I am six
The elastic on my panties has snapped
This is before girls could wear pants
So I am holding them up under my dress all day
with both hands
2 o'clock recess
Joey K begins chasing me around the playground
I am running, holding my panties up with both hands
through my dress - not easy
He grabs me, and kisses me.
My hands fly up.
My panties slide off.
This was my first kiss and I was angry as a wet calico cat
I was hissing and spitting, and held a grudge for a long time.
Never wanting to see this creepy boy again.
2:35 pm
We get called to the principal's office
The kisser and me.
She asks what happens
He says "It's okay Miss Kneeland, when I grow up I am going to
marry her."
Marry me! I am going to marry Daddy, thank you very much!
October 1971
I married my first kisser
We are still married.
And he is still chasing me
I learned to read
thanks to Miss Kneeland
The principal at my gradeschool
Who had taught my daddy and his brother
Using a mirror
She was an old maid
About two hundred years old
With white hair in a bun
She looked severe
But she was kind
And she taught me to read
using a miror
Understanding what I needed
in 1958
She was a pioneer
who understood dyslexia
even though there was no name for it
back in the day.
I thank her for the gift of reading every day.
I knew I loved you when nothing else made sense
When you paraded around in my mind making me smile
When I spent class time writing names of our children
I knew I loved you when you turned those hazel eyes on me
And gave me the kind of look I had not seen
Since my first day on earth when my parents looked at me
I knew I loved you when I stopped seeing other faces
When I began lying to everyone else about being busy,
Because I was holding all my time open for your phone call.
I knew I loved you when I stopped hating you
For telling Miss Kneeland in first grade that you were
Going to grow up and marry me.
You somehow helped me eliminate twelve years of hate.
I guess that is when I really knew for sure….
Marjory Wentworth Mother
Three Year Anniversary of
Mary Kneeland Heath Tully
death.
I thought of Heath Kits and
Tully's coffee when I had
seen her name.
What might I find on her thoughtful mind;
A poem for me that she recently designed,
Daughter of mine,
Sun on does shine;
So sorry soon will be leaving you behind.
Jim Horn
Jimmy was called names, discouraged, disparaged,
The only people who pretended to like him were my mother,
And Miss Kneeland, our first grade teacher.
Jimmy loved my sister and me. He was three times as tall, as tall as the sixth graders, and he was in second grade, but he had flunked twice …. At least.
Kids made fun of him. Called him horrible stuff.
My sister and I threw rocks at them and yelled at them.
But we were small, little.
Loved by Jimmy.
One day Jimmy stopped coming to school.
It was too hard for him.
The next thing we knew he was in big trouble
with a neighbor man
for taking his tractor apart.
That “retard” took my tractor apart!
The rumors were going around hard and fast.
The man was so mad at the retard, our friend Jimmy.
Until he discovered that the tractor,
which had been a lemon from the get-go,
was finally running smoothly.
Then, to the man's credit,
he told everybody in town
Jimmy the “retarded” boy is a “genius.”
My sister and my mother and Miss Kneeland and I already knew that.
She can’t be left-handed, my mother told my dad.
Miss Kneeland, the first grade teacher says it’s simply not the fad.
There must be something wrong with her, the whole family agreed.
Look at her right now, 40 feet in the air, upside down in that stupid Oak tree.
So they made me wear a mitt on my left hand for an entire school year,
Forcing me to use the other hand, their reason to this day is certainly not clear.
But I do type 85 words a minute, thanks to that and the meanest typing teacher that ever was.
But that story is for another time, as I’m in a great mood right now, and plan to keep my little buzz.
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