Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [11]
I quickly fell into the routine at school.
We learned to print the letters of the alphabet on rough paper in uneven, heavily pressed pencil lines. We learned to count and write numbers, and to add and subtract. And we learned to speak English. That was the rule. Only English at school. No Pennsylvania Dutch. After a few months, we were all moderately fluent in the language.
On the whole, I really liked school, although I could never admit it.
Girls liked school.
Boys weren’t supposed to.
When asked by an adult, I scoffed and claimed I didn’t. But I did.
The first year passed, and before long, I was one of the second graders. Now I could strut about with my classmates and look pityingly on the poor, confused little first graders, huddled in groups looking as if they might cry.
Miss Eicher was my second-grade teacher too. And no, I still wasn’t one of her favorites.
I loved books and spent hours absorbing great chunks of words, to the detriment of my other studies. During that year, my class learned penmanship, writing in script. I hated it passionately. Our usual lesson consisted of writing sentences—usually about ten or twenty—from our lesson book. When we were done, Miss Eicher allowed us to go outside and play, even though it wasn’t recess.
My friends Jerry and Harold zipped through their writing exercises, scrawling their sentences in mere minutes before rushing outside, while I sat at my desk, laboring mightily to finish my writing so I could join them. It took me forever.
Eventually, my frustration got the best of me. One fateful day, I scrawled a few illegible lines across the barren expanse of notebook paper and rushed outside to join my classmates. Miss Eicher usually didn’t check our writing assignments anyway.
In our next writing class, I did it again. And again, in the writing class after that. And again and again.
I got away with it for weeks. It was my little secret.
But the day of reckoning approached.
Then it arrived.
I was heading in from outside after the first bell rang when I heard someone call my name. Miss Eicher wanted to see me at my desk. Right now.
A tremor of fear sliced through me.
I walked inside with a sinking heart. Miss Eicher was sitting at my desk, looking down at my writing notebook, a crowd of my classmates clustered around her. A low murmur drifted through the group. I caught snatches, whispers. “A-a-ah.” “O-o-oh.” “Didn’t do his writing.” “Just made scribbles.” “Teacher just caught it. . . .”
As I walked the gauntlet, my classmates lined the aisle, staring with wide accusing eyes and jostling for a better view of the imminent inquisition. I sensed no pity in them. Only morbid fascination.
I approached my desk, feet dragging, and stood with a hanging head before my judge. She looked at me sternly.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded, motioning to the notebook spread open on my desk. The damning scribbles seemed to leap from the pages, screaming accusations at me before all the world.
I stood mute and wide eyed. I’d get a whipping now for sure. Miss Eicher had her established methods for dealing with miscreants. The prisoner would be escorted outside to the woodshed and left there to ponder his or her fate while Miss Eicher came back into the classroom, slid open a desk drawer, pulled out a sturdy wooden ruler, and marched back to the woodshed, where swift and severe punishment would be administered.
I had seen it. I had heard it. It had happened to my friends. Now my time had come, I knew. I swallowed, my brown eyes brimming with tears. But I didn’t cry.
I feared Mom would find out. Oh, the shame. And Dad. Another whipping would follow at home. The seconds crawled by. Miss Eicher did not soften her stern, unrelenting gaze.
Abruptly, she instructed my classmates to fetch their writing books so she could check their work. Jerry and Harold, the two swiftest writers, scrambled piously to comply. They gleefully showed her all their finished lessons. They cast scornful glances at me. They wouldn’t