Wildebeest are Carnivores: My Battle with The Witch.

I was somewhat of a terror in elementary school. I hated the idea of homework, and did what I could to avoid it. Sitting in a classroom-chair for an extended period of time was torture. I expressed my outrage by usurping the teacher’s lesson plan: making my friends laugh, playing pencil-pop (remember that?), and generally trying to convince as many of my classmates that what we were learning was absolutely useless. My favorite question, and one my teachers grew to hate, was “why?” If a teacher couldn’t answer why the subject we were learning was important I stopped listening. As the school year went along, I found my outstretched hand going intentionally unnoticed by teachers who had finally had enough of my antics.
I was a curious student, constantly on a personal journey of discovery. I hated math because black and white worksheets screamed busy work. Social Studies was my favorite because I learned geography, history and learned about people and cultures around the world. As a first grader, Science was great because we talked about animals. Seven-year-old me loved animals.
We had a green index card box at home that housed my coveted National Geographic Explorer cards. Each night, instead of doing my homework, I would study those cards. Not because of a desire to become a wildlife biologist or zoologist, I honestly had no idea who I wanted to be at seven. I studied those cards because they exposed the world to me. Learning about animals in Africa, Asia, and South America took me away from Georgia and out into the world. I was a black Robinson Crusoe and Charles Darwin.
Many of my teachers never saw that curiosity inside of me, especially my first grade teacher Ms. Meeks. She hated me. And at age seven, I thought she was an evil witch I had to destroy. By the winter of my first grade year, after I’d missed weeks of popcorn parties because of bad behavior, I had had enough. And then we got the animal unit in science. I was a rock star. I knew all of the answers, and would usually blurt out the right answer in class. Remember, she never called on me.
One day I walked into class and saw three cards on my desk: carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore. We were instructed to hold up the card that corresponded with the diet of each animal. Lions, tigers, cheetahs, easy. Elephants, rhinos, antelopes, easy. And then she said, “Wildebeest.” My hand shot into the air first, I was waving my herbivore card proudly. My classmates were puzzled by the prompt, looking around trying to crowdsource the answer, most of them finally determined that a wildebeest was a carnivore. They were wrong. I knew it. Then Ms. Meeks said, “correct class, Wildebeest are carnivores.” “You’re wrong” I yelled out, “You’re wrong Ms. Meeks!”
I’ll spare you the details of our exchange, but my exclamation resulted in my clip being moved to red, and Ms. Meeks did what she loved most, she called my mother to tell her that I, again, was on red. That night, before I was able to explain my teacher’s gross mistake, my mother exacted her punishment on me. After I dried my tears and gathered myself I found my green National Geographic cardholder and showed her my wildebeest card. “Momma,” I said timidly, “look, a wildebeest is a herbivore.” She studied the card quizzically, determined that I was correct, and quickly apologized for the punishment. Then she told me that I could take my card to school the next day to show my teacher. That night I prepared my presentation, and prepared myself for battle, that next day I was going to slay that evil witch. I could hardly sleep.
Ms. Meeks knew that I got a whoopin every time my paperclip was on red. That morning she asked with sinister satisfaction, “how was your night, Reuschal?” I hated her, and she hated me. When she told us to open up our science folder, it was time to get my revenge. I raised my hand. “Yes Reuschal,” she said flatly. I sprung into action. I stood up out of my seat and exclaimed, “Ms. Meeks you were wrong! Wildebeest are herbivores and you owe me an apology!” I lifted my National Geographic card in the air, and passed it around the room to cheers and rounds of applause from my friends. And then, without saying a word, she walked over to my clip and moved it from green, skipping yellow and orange, to red. She would call my mother during lunch to tell her what happened.
I got the best whoopin of my life that night, and I took it with a smile. I had defeated the evil witch and became a hero to my friends. Ms. Meeks moved my clip to red many more times that year. I may have lost the war, but I stood my ground against a teacher, allowing me to win the hearts and minds of my classmates. I was invited to so many birthday parties that year. Unfortunately, I was unable to go to most… because my clip was on red.