2. Fire Drills, Free Lunch, and Forgery…
Note: This is the second installment of the serial publication of my memoirs, “What’s Left Behind.”
To read previous chapters, go to https://medium.com/whats-left-behind.
I may have missed the first day of kindergarten.
I can’t be sure. But for some reason, when we had our first fire drill, I didn’t follow the same instructions as the other kids.
I did have an intense fear of fire as a child.
In most other neighborhoods this might have been unusual, but in North Sayville in the 1980s, there were so many fires that the smell — that distinct, potent blend of acrid synthetics and sweet timbers left in the wake of every structural fire — still transports me headlong back to my youth.
I was only two years old when the movie theater down the block — on County Road, next door to the Church of St. Francis — was burned to ash after rumors spread it might be converted into a lecherous picture palace. The raging inferno erupted on New Year’s Eve, in the dead of a night so cold it left behind frostbitten firemen and 6-foot icicles hanging from the power lines. While I was too young to maintain any actual memories from this day, the story was told so often that it seemed real enough.
There was also a resident barber with luck so rotten it can only have been attributed to some sort of arson or insurance fraud: three barbershops went up in smoke in about as many years. I remember passing one of them shortly after it burned — the scrape and crackle under my feet from shattered glass still littering the sidewalk, the sight of ravaged barber chairs facing soot-streaked mirrors a haunting memory to this day.
Most memorable, though, was the morning all of North Sayville woke up to find out Main Street Guns and Ammo had caught fire. The whole fiasco started when some teenagers tried to weld open the shop’s skylight and dropped a blowtorch inside, setting the building ablaze. I remember standing with my mother amid a sea of emergency vehicles and flashing lights extending in every direction; against the hazy-orange, smoke-filled sky, I watched a silhouette of water cascade over Main Street into the inferno that had swept through half the block and needed to be extinguished from across the street to avoid exploding ammunition.
Ding, ding, ding!
The harsh metallic clanging obliterated whatever rational thought processes I’d acquired in my five years of life, and while the other kids lined up at the door in an organized fashion, I began to shriek in terror and run laps around the classroom. I then climbed on top of my desk, shielded my little ears with my hands, and cried frantically until Mrs. Dahlinger snatched me by the waist and carried me, kicking and screaming, out to the schoolyard where the rest of the students assembled quietly against the fence. When the drill was over, my teacher — together with the principal and school nurse — were unable to restore me to my senses, and they had to call my mother to take me home.
For the next two years, I had to be taken out of the school before they sounded the alarm; for the next six, I had to endure the jokes and jabs of my classmates for having gone berserk that day.
I remember going to Katie Carisi’s birthday party in kindergarten. Katie lived on Handsome Avenue. That was where the richest kids lived, their houses stashed away behind giant Elms and Maples with in-ground swimming pools in the backyard.
But that was kindergarten — when it’s customary for parents to invite the whole class to your party whether you want them there or not — and so it said nothing of my reputation, nor hers, that I was invited.
For as long as I can remember, the other kids never wanted anything to do with me. Perhaps my fear of fire drills had left a lasting impression — or the fact that I spent most of Katie’s party hiding behind the couch.
Whatever the reason, I never seemed to be much more than a target for my classmates’ daily pranks and insults, a landfill for their pent-up anger and insecurity. If I wasn’t fat, I was ugly; if I wasn’t ugly, my clothes were ugly. I was dirty, gross, smelly, the undisputed source of those proverbial cooties; and whoever didn’t overtly ridicule me simply ignored me lest they tarnish their own reputation.
I remember thinking that I never bothered anyone, I never caused trouble, and I always shared when I was asked to — in which case everything they said must be true. What I failed to understand were the implicit social standards of childhood that deemed you worthy of friendship; standards that superseded the merit of a good heart; standards that, at Lincoln Elementary, seemed grossly dependent on how much money you came from.
It was never a secret that my family wasn’t rich. You could figure that out just by walking past our house — the overgrown grass and unbridled weeds on the outside a dead giveaway to the destitution lurking within. Those who didn’t know where I lived only need stand behind me in the cafeteria line while the lunch lady checked off my name on that very short, very odious “Free Lunch” list — a surefire sign that your mother went to the supermarket with food stamps.
The only thing worse than not being financially up to snuff was being different in any way. And while my distressed birth thankfully spared me any serious complications, it did leave behind a rather peculiar defect.
According to my father, I was a few weeks old when he noticed a slight wobble in my eyes. My mother didn’t think much of it, seeing as she needed surgery as a child to correct a lazy eye. But when she brought me to the pediatrician, he confirmed this wasn’t the case and sent me for a battery of tests. I spent the next couple of months in and out of the hospital while a team of doctors checked me for blindness, brain damage, epilepsy, tumors, and anything else they could think to tell my parents might be wrong. In the end, they diagnosed me with a congenital nystagmus: an involuntary movement of the eyes that would likely lead to poor vision but should otherwise not affect me — save for the ill fortune of a popular board game while I was in elementary school called “Dizzy, Dizzy Dinosaur.” Paired with the fact I was also the tallest kid in my class, this became my nickname for years to come.
Truth be told, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had a magnificent wardrobe and complete control of my optical nerves because, when you’re a less-than-fortunate kid in a more-than-judgmental world, there is always something wrong with you.
“Can’t she do something about it?” I heard Kelly Weber say to Amanda McFee.
“It looks so bad,” Amanda added. “You think she’d use hairspray or something.”
I was in the third or fourth grade, lined up on the blacktop after recess, when I heard Kelly and Amanda talking; I turned to see them sizing me up and down with an expression of disgust I knew too well. What they said didn’t bother me much because I had no idea what they were talking about. What bothered me was how they spoke — looking dead at me, talking as though I were stone-deaf.
Once we returned to class, I went straight to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to figure out what they were talking about.
That was when I saw it: a tiny cowlick, which I’d never even noticed before, became instantly repulsive.
At home I used hairspray — as Amanda had suggested — and attempted to situate my bangs in any way that would make them lie flat. When nothing worked, I waited until everyone was sleeping, found a pair of scissors, closed myself in the bathroom, gripped my bangs at the root — and chopped.
“AISLING!” my mother gasped when she saw me in the morning. “What did you do?”
She stood staring at me, her hand over her mouth, eyes open wide.
Not sure what else to do, I decided to play stupid.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, innocently.
“Your hair!” she exclaimed, curious that I “didn’t know” what she was talking about. “Sweetheart, what did you do to your hair?”
Continuing my charade, I went in the bathroom and stretched my neck to look in the mirror.
“Oh my God!” I cried out. “WHAT HAPPENED?”
My mother laughed — although I’m not sure if she was laughing at the spiky little stubs that were formerly my bangs, or my very poor attempt to act surprised by it.
I cried the day I was assigned Mrs. Haughey for my third-grade teacher. William had her when he was in the third grade, and I always heard the story of how she caught him chewing bubblegum and made him stick it on his nose and stand in the corner.
To make matters worse, Mrs. Haughey lived directly across the street from us in a battered, mahogany, gothic Victorian — complete with witch’s hat — buried behind clusters of ragged shrubbery and enormous pine trees. In the backyard, a miserly old welder — likely Mr. Haughey— worked in a ramshackle shed where he cast a constant flitter of orange and blue sparks. My brothers and I concocted a tale that the old man lived in that shed because Mrs. Haughey was so mean she wouldn’t let him sleep in the house.
Because Mrs. Haughey lived so close, my mother requested my teacher be changed. That’s where Mrs. Pechman came in.
Of all my elementary school teachers, I liked Mrs. Pechman the least. My fourth-grade teacher, Mr. O’ Halloran, was a close second. He used to throw chairs when he was angry, and one day he bent down in front of me to pick up a book he’d flung across the room and farted in my face.
But my dislike for Mrs. Pechman was different.
It was personal.
Punctuality was never one of my strong points.
It’s hard enough for an eight-year-old to be timely — impossible when she has to wake herself up and get ready for school while navigating the daily morning spectacle of an incorrigible brother who fought tooth and nail to avoid getting on the bus.
It was in Mrs. Pechman’s class that I most hated being late.
“Good morning, Aisling,” she always said — although, more often than not, with a scathing tone accompanied by some chiding remark, like, “Well, look who decided to join us this morning.”
Even worse, though, was Mrs. Pechman’s class rule that if you didn’t do your homework, you had to write a note to your parents explaining what happened, then submit it, signed, the following day — a policy I think existed solely to make the eighth year of my life even more miserable than it already was. Even less adept at completing my homework than being on time, I seemed to be writing notes on a daily basis. But I always forgot to get them signed, so I had to write a second letter telling my mother about the first one.
“OK, everybody,” Mrs. Pechman said to the class. “Leave your notebooks open on your desk and come over for activity time.”
Terror erupted inside me when I realized that not only had I not done my homework — again, but I had forgotten to get my letter signed. Again! My stomach churned. My heart thumped in my throat.
Then I had an idea.
Flipping through my notebook, I found my mother’s signature from a previous letter. Her penmanship seemed simple enough, and we’d just started learning script. I took a pencil from my desk, pulled the notebook onto my lap, and meticulously copied my mother’s signature at the bottom of the page — erasing and amending it until it looked just right — then placed the open notebook on my desk and joined the rest of my class.
“AISLING!”
Silence fell over the classroom. Everyone turned to look at my teacher who stood by my desk, holding my notebook.
“Get over here!” she barked at me.
I made my way to my desk fighting back tears of shame and fear.
“Did you do this?” Mrs. Pechman demanded.
I looked at the signature, still convinced it was perfect, desperately wanting to lie but unable to summon the courage to do so.
“Yes,” I mumbled, my eyes dropping to the floor.
All I remember after that is a lot of yelling while my classmates looked on, then sitting alone at my desk writing a third — this time much longer — letter explaining to my mother exactly what I had done.
At the end of the year, we were assigned our very first book report. If I was good at anything, it was reading and writing; it was my chance to redeem myself in Mrs. Pechman’s eyes.
I don’t recall which book I chose, but the night before it was due, I sat at the dining room table with a stack of composition paper, copying the contents of said book — verbatim.
On a piece of blue construction paper, I drew a beautiful replication of the book cover and bound it all together with white yarn, certain that I’d just finished the best book report of the whole class.
But when I got it back, there was a red F on the top of the first page and a single sentence beside it: This is NOT a book report!!!
Apparently, in the third grade, plagiarism was no better than forgery.
