Cipher in the Snow
(a true story)
By Gene Misner
Originally published in the NEA Journal for Teachers in 1964
It started with tragedy on a biting cold February morning. I
was driving behind the Melford Corner's bus as I did most snowy mornings
on
my way to school. It veered and stopped short at the hotel which it had
no
business doing. And I was annoyed as I had to come to an unexpected stop.
A boy lurched out of the bus, reeled, stumbled, and collapsed on the snow
bank at the curb. The bus driver and I reached him at the same moment.
His
thin, hollow face was white, even against the snow. "He's dead," the
driver
whispered. It didn't register for a minute. I glanced quickly at the
scared young faces staring down at us from the school bus. "A doctor,
quick. I'll phone from the hotel."
"No use, I tell you, he's dead." The driver looked down at
the
boy's still form. "He never even said he felt bad," he muttered, "just
tapped me on the shoulder and said real quiet, 'I'm sorry, I have to get
off
at the hotel.' That's all, polite, and apologizing-like."
At school the giggling, shuffling morning noise quieted as the
news went down the halls. I passed a huddle of girls. "Who was it, who
dropped dead on the way to school," I heard one of them half whisper.
"Don't know his name, some kid from Milford Corners," was the
reply. It was like that in the faculty room and in the principle's
office.
"I'd appreciate your going out to tell the parents," the
principle told me. "They haven't a phone, and anyway somebody from school
should go there in person. I'll cover your cl*****."
"Why me," I asked. "Wouldn't it be better if you did it?"
"I don't know the boy," the principle admitted, "and in last
year's sophomore's personalities column I note that you were listed as his
favorite teacher."
I drove through the snow and cold down the bad canyon road to
the Evan's place, and thought about the boy, Cliff Evans. His favorite
teacher, I thought, he hasn't spoken two words to me in two years. I
could
see him in my mind's eye all right, sitting back there in the last seat in
my afternoon literature class. He came in the room by himself, and left
by
himself. "Cliff Evans," I muttered to myself, "a boy who never talked."
I
thought a minute. A boy who never smiled. I never saw him smile once.
The big ranch kitchen was clean and warm and I blurted out my
news somehow. Mrs. Evans reached blindly toward a chair. "He never said
anything about being ailing."
His stepfather snorted, "He ain't said nothing about anything
since I moved in here."
Mrs. Evans pushed a pan to the back of the stove and began to
untie her apron.
"Now hold on," her husband snapped. "I've got to have
breakfast
before I go to town. Nothing we can do now anyway. If Cliff hadn't been
so
dumb, he'd of told us he didn't feel good."
After school I sat in the office and stared bleakly at the
records spread out before me. I was to close the file and write the
obituary for the school paper. The almost bare sheets mocked the effort.
Cliff Evans, white, never legally adopted by stepfather, five young half
brothers and sisters. These meager strands of information and the list of
D
grades were all the records had to offer. Cliff Evans had silently come
in
the school door in the mornings, gone out the school door in the evenings,
and that was all. He'd never belonged to a club, he'd never played on a
team, he'd never held an office, as far as I could tell, he'd never done
one
happy, noisey, kid thing. He'd never been anybody at all.
How do you go about making a boy into a zero? The grade
school
records showed me. The first and second grade teachers' annotations read,
"Sweet, shy child, timid, but eager." Then the third grade had opened the
attack. Some teacher had written in a good firm hand, "Cliff won't talk,
uncooperative, slow learner." The academic sheet had followed with dull,
slow witted, low I.Q., and they became correct. The boy's I.Q. score in
the
ninth grade was listed at eighty-three, but his I.Q. in the third grade
had
been one hundred and six. The score didn't go under a hundred until the
seventh grade. Even shy, timid, sweet children have resilience. It takes
time to break them. I stomped to the typerwirter and wrote a savage
re****t,
pointing out what education had done to Cliff Evans, and placed the re****t
into the sad dog-eared file. I banged the typewriter and slammed the file
and crashed the door shut, but it didn't make me feel much better. A
little
boy kept walking after me, a little boy with a peaked, pale face, a skinny
boy in faded jeans, and big eyes that had looked and searched for a long
time, and then had become veiled. I could guess how many times he'd been
chosen last to play sides in a game, how many whispered child
conversations
had excluded him, how many times he hadn't been asked at all. I could see
and hear the faces and voices that said over and over, "You're a nothing
Cliff Evans, you're a nothing."
A child is a believing creature. Cliff undoubtedly believed
them. Suddenly it seamed clear to me, when finally there was nothing left
at all for Cliff Evans he collapsed on a snow bank and went away.
The doctor might list heart failure as the cause of death but
that wouldn't change my mind. We couldn't fin ten students in the school
who had known Cliff well enough to attend the funeral as his friends. So
the student body officers and the committee from the junior class went, as
a
group, to the church being politely sad. I attended the services with
them
and sat through it with a lump of cold lead in my chest and a big resolve
growing through me.
I've never forgotten Cliff Evans nor that resolve. He's been
my
challenge year after year, class after class. I look up and down the rows
carefully each September at the unfamiliar faces. I look for veiled eyes
or
bodies scrounged into a seat in an alien world. "Look kids," I say
silently, "I may not do anything else for you this year, but not one of
you
is going to come out of here a nobody. I'll work our fight to the bitter
end doing battle with society and the school board, but I won't have one
of
you coming out of here thinking himself into a zero.
"Van Johnson" <junkman18@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:md%sd.96168$7i4.82628@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> As she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of
> school, she told the children an untruth.
> Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she
loved
> them all the same. However, that was
> impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a
> little boy named Teddy Stoddard.
>
> Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he
> Did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy
and
> that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could be
unpleasant.
>
> <>It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in
> marking his papers with a broad red pe
> <>making bold X's and then putting a big "F" at the top of his papers.
> <>At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review
> each
> child's past records and she put Teddy's off until last. However, when
> she
> reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.
>
> Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready
> laugh.
> He does his work neatly and has good manners... he is a joy to be
> around."
> <>His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well
> liked
> by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal
> illness and life at home must be a struggle."
>
> His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him.
> He
> tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest and his
> home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken."
>
> Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't
show
> much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and he sometimes
> sleeps in class."
>
> By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of
> herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas
> presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for
> Teddy's.
> His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he
> gotfrom a grocery bag.
> Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other
presents.
> Some of the children started to laugh when she found a
> rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that
> was one-quarter full of perfume. But she stifled the children's
laughter
> when she
> exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some
> of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day
> ust long enough to say,
> "Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my Mom used to." After the
> children left, she cried for at least an hour.
> <>On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.
> Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular
> attention to Teddy.
> As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she
> encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year,
> Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and,
despite
> her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one
of
> her "teacher's pets."
> <><>A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling
her
> that she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.
>
> Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote
> that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still
> the best teacher he ever had in life.
>
> Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things
> had
> been tough at times, he'd stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would
> soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He assured Mrs.
> Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he had ever
had
> in his whole life.
>
> Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he
> explained that after he got his bachelor's degree, he decided to go a
> little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and
> favorite teacher he ever had.
> But now his name was a little longer. The letter was signed, Theodore
F.
> Stoddard, MD.
>
> <>The story does not end there. You see, there was yet another letter
that
> spring. Teddy said he had met this girl and was going to be married. He
> explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was
> wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit at the wedding in the
place
> that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom.
>
> Of course, Mrs. Thompson did. And guess what? She wore that bracelet,
> the one with several rhinestones missing. Moreover, she made sure she
was
> wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their
> last Christmas together.
>
> They hugged each other, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson's
> ear, "Thank you Mrs. Thompson for believing in me. Thank you so much for
> making me feel im****tant and showing me that I could make a difference."
>
> Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back. She said, "Teddy,
> you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make
> a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I met you."
>
> (For you that don't know, Teddy Stoddard is the Dr. at Iowa Methodist in
> Des Moines that houses the Stoddard Cancer Wing).
>
> Warm someone's heart today. . . pass this along. I love this story so
very
> much, I cry every time I read it. Just try to make a difference in
> someone's life today? tomorrow? just "do it".
>
> Random acts of kindness, I think they call it?
>
> "Believe in Angels, then return the favor"
>
> "I believe that friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when
our
> wings have trouble remembering how to fly
>
>
>
>
>
|
