Mrs. Blanders reminded me of a nervous peacock.  Her dot of a face was short and sharp and held two squinty blue-lined eyes.  She had a tiny head, which following the slender curve of her neck gave way to two perpetually shrugged shoulders.  Her tail end spread itself twice as wide as her upperparts, and if it had been adorned with a hundred of those blue-circled eyes, she could have watched me with bird-like anxiety at any angle from her perch in the front of the room.  Needless to say, Mrs. Blanders was a control freak.

I still remember the look on Mrs. Blanders face when I bounded into her classroom during Open House Night, the week before school was to start.  Fourth grade was the beginning of something new for me—and I began immediately telling my new teacher about myself and how excited I was about the coming year.  In response, Mrs. Blanders gave only a knowing glance to a classmate’s mother standing beside her.

“Oh no,” she said in a tone that seemed almost apologetic to the woman.  “I see what I’m in for this year.”

Mrs. Blanders had thought she was being cute.  As I left the room to find my own mother, an older girl on my bus route stopped me in the hallway and asked, “So who’d ya get this year?”

“Mrs. Blanders.”

The girl had smiled a smile I would later come to describe as a “priss-pot” expression.  “Oh, I had her.  I just loved her!”  My disassociation with the girl only worked to heighten my sense of dread.

It didn’t take me long to realize that it wasn’t blind dislike Mrs. Blanders had for me; I scared her.  I was a perceived challenge to the norms of her strictly regimented classroom.  I was the free radical who attached myself to all of the “good” little fourth grade cells, luring them away from their proper functions.  Shortening my own work time by completing just enough of my assignment to ensure an A, I would then proceed to turn to the quiet, uncorrupted, completely composed student beside me, and begin explaining why pink is a better color than green, or how to properly perform a plie in Fifth Position, complete with a demonstration that would require my use of the small space between the second and third row of desks.  By age 10, I had developed a knack for doing two things at once, but I’ll get to that later.

It infuriated Mrs. Blanders that the only bad grade she could give me was in the area of conduct, and even there she could only catch me in action long enough to award a B.  To some at William H. Natcher Elementary, I will always be a B.  I, however, have learned there is more fun at B.  A is too pointy and straight; B is rounder.  It allows for more movement.

Mrs. Blanders had an order for everything, and she loved to remind the class that “everything you do today will affect you in college,” as if we thought of college while hanging upside down on the monkey bars, staring down at the discarded bloody band-aids and smiley-face stickers scattered in the saw-dust.  Still, I began to believe her; she put the fear of failure in me as I began to catch shadowy glimpses of my college self, explaining to old men around a meeting table why I had received a B in conduct the second quarter of my fourth grade year.  And then there were the “Projects.”  Throughout the year we each had to do at least five projects involving such themes as “St. Patrick’s Day” and “Frontier Kentucky.”  Each project had to be presented on one of those three-foot cardboard foldouts, and be accompanied by a binder of information of at least 20 pages.  Mrs. Blanders designed the projects to measure just how organized, how neat and precise, how color coordinated, how lax for time, essentially, our mother were.

In mid-October, Mrs. Blanders caught me playing Go Fish under my desk with Andrea Long during an “All Hallow’s Eve” presentation and decided once an for all that if she could not make me conform to her regiment, she could at least sit me as far away from human contact as possible.  She then had me seated next to Gilbert Hall.

Gilbert was the only black kid in the class.  His desk was in the back corner, the farthest one away from Mrs. Blanders’s, and was also within an arms distance from the window, where our “Let’s See How Long it Takes a Banana to Decompose” project sat in sunlight on the sill, surrounded by fruit flies.  Gilbert kept his homework organized in little crunched up balls of notebook paper inside his desk, and his projects were all mismatched products of his hand only that fell apart as soon as the wings of his cardboard display were opened.  If I was a B in Mrs. Blander’s eyes, Gilbert was a C, a letter with no direction at all except to curve off into oblivion, and occasionally he was a D, which brings to mind all sorts of negative words: degrading, degenerate, dirty, derogatory.  Gilbert was even known to have an acquaintance with the letter F and all of its affiliates, a fact to which I soon would be eternally grateful.  Though Gilbert never finished all his work, never brought his parents to Open House, and basically seemed even more incapable of functioning in her military-style classroom than I was, he always answered Mrs. Blanders with a polite, “Yes ma’am.”

To my fellow students’ disbelief, I, a doctor’s daughter, lived in a small, three bedroom house directly across the street from Gilbert.  More than once, Mrs. Blanders had put off on me the job of educating Gilbert, she herself inviting him over to my house for tutoring.  She had found no way to reconcile Gilbert to the image of the Perfect Student she had constructed in her head and believed herself entirely unable to reach him.  At least, I would like to believe that Gilbert’s behavior, not his cultural differences, kept Mrs. Blanders at a distance.  At any rate, I felt used.

Though living across the street from Gilbert had begun to put a damper on my playtime, it did allow me to know things about him that Mrs. Blanders, and the rest of the class, did not.  I had seen his massive father stomping into the house, leaving the front door wide open so all could hear his bellowing voice giving a command.  I knew that for Gilbert, “ma’am” and “sir” were a way of life.

It was around the time of my banishment that Mrs. Blanders, calling on the children of the class to help stabilize her ever-shaky sense of control, began incorporating The Vote.  Should Gilbert have to stand outside the classroom for ten minutes for failing to turn in his Kentucky Project? The class said yes.  Would it be a fair punishment for Devon to stay in during recess for pinching Madison Bright on the arm?  Of course!  Should Laura have to put that check by her name—that final, sixth check that would lower her conduct grade to a B and keep her form being a Principal’s Scholar for the first time in her short but dazzling academic career?  YES!  Mrs. Blanders had given that smile that says, “I’m sorry, but not really,” her hands in the air as if there was nothing she could do to change the verdict of the class.  She could not keep me from the public shame of being the only girl who just couldn’t get it together.  I placed a check by my other checks on the board, and then turned to trek back to the far reaches of my desk in the corner next to Gilbert, my partner in exile.

But all was not despair.  Despite my addiction to Micromagic Fries (I never ate just one box, but two at a time) and King Size Kit-Kat bars, and despite my permed bangs and pocket-T for every day of the week, I managed to attract an admirer in the form of Drew Hillwood.  He was one of those kids who could sit with his knees bent behind him, letting his butt rest on the floor between his upturned ankles.  I call this the “Elastic Dopey Pose.”  Dopey was a great word for Drew.  Drew occasionally made D’s.  I had told him that if he cleaned out his desk I would be his girlfriend.  I would have been his girlfriend anyway, but his desk was directly in front of mine (he was still managing, unlike me, to hang on the outskirts of classroom civilization) and I was tired of looking at the crumpled up papers, the sticky pencil shavings, and the pocket of melting glue seeping out of the corner and down the leg of the desk.  He immediately set to work and in no time it was official.  Drew and I were a couple.
 Shortly before Christmas, my reputation for unfeminine behavior came to a head.  I had received a shocking 15 Homework Alerts (I did not have time in my busy mirror-singing schedule to actually do work at home!), and I had forgotten to brush my teeth before school nine days out of the semester.  My mother, who refused to buy me a pair of Guess? Jeans or let me shave my armpits, had given up curling my tremendous bangs every morning, stating over the brim of her current mystery novel that she “permed those things so she wouldn’t have to curl them!”  I had spiraled into complete reject status and was even contemplating forming a new club called the SPS, or Students Perpetually in Sweatpants.  Only Gilbert, and Lucas, the kid with the chronic bloody nose, were left to surpass.  Surely, I thought, I could hold on to what little normalcy I still possessed, but no.  On Friday, December the 3rd, events occurred that had the power to propel me into the outer galaxies of human existence, the place reserved for those who commit the most base, most disgusting, most absolutely heinous crime of all—the Sneeze-Fart.
 Previously, my brother Paul and I had researched the subject, and came to the hypothesis that if a kid were to sneeze and fart at exactly the same time, he would instantaneously die of a lack of oxygen.  This was a most alarming conclusion, because everyone knew the Sneeze-Fart could attack without warning. I lived in fear of its sudden strike, and approached each of my sneezes with the utmost attention to controlling my other bodily functions.  Letting my guard down for even a second would mean my ultimate demise.  It was during Silent Reading Time, however, that I let down the fort.  The force of the blow from my nose was too strong for the sphincter stronghold I had established and my fortress crumbled from the sheer force of the fart.

Drew, who had been engulfed in The Human Body, a book that was being slipped around the room under various desks unbeknownst to Mrs. Blanders, shot around as if a balloon had popped in his ear.

“Gross!” he said, as his upper lip snarled and his eyebrows scrunched to meet in the middle of his forehead in a look of utter disgust.  “Was that you?”

I sat in a stupor. “I…”

“It was her!” Patrick, who sat next to Drew, said with his hand covering the trail of laughter pouring out of his mouth.

“It wasn’t me!  I…”

“The denier is the supplier,” Patrick said.  (I must note that in later years, he would come to be known as “Pockmark Patrick,” and would steal over $500 worth of fake gold watches from behind the counter of JC Penney’s jewelry department.)
 I tried to think fast, but the blow had jarred me so violently that I could only look in confusion at my accusers, the entire fourth row of the class.  Had I really just done the unimaginable?  I knew from that moment on I would not only have to deal with being a little chubby, naïve to the GAP, and a college-dropout in the making, I would also be known as the girl who could fart with the boys.  The heavens above could not save me from such a fate.

“It was me,” a voice to my left said.  Gilbert had stopped playing the drums with his pencils on a copy of Huckleberry Finn and was now staring at Drew and Patrick.  “I did it on my arm.  Watch.”  He pressed his lips to his forearm and blew out violently.
 One by one, the students began to turn away.  Where they had expected twisted metal, they had discovered only a fender-bender.  Only Drew was left darting his eyes skeptically between Gilbert and me.  Gilbert blew on his arm again in
affirmation, and Drew let it go.

Mrs. Blanders, however, would not be as merciful.  At my deafening blow, she had jumped like a blackbird at the sound of a gunshot, and then cautiously fluttered back down to her wooden stool, looking in Gilbert’s direction.  The idea that I, a girl, was responsible had never been an option.  On spotting Gilbert’s arm instrumentals, she smiled smugly at her own excellent judgment.

“Gilbert!” she said.  “Step outside, please!”

I watched him go, smiling back at me just before the door into the hallway slammed shut behind them.  His teeth were white and straight and beautiful.

Our school district split after the sixth grade, and Gilbert and I went to the “poor” middle school, which turned out to be anything but poor, rich in experiences I might otherwise have never had.  In high school, my family moved away from Gilbert and into Mrs. Blanders’s neighborhood, and every now and then I ran across her while out for a walk.  Sometimes she waved, other times she pretended not to see me.  It wasn’t until just a week ago that I actually spoke with Mrs. Blanders again.  In fact, it was at a Meet the Authors banquet. I learned she was no longer in the classroom but now in charge of fourth grade curriculum, inventing new projects, no doubt.  She asked me how I was doing, and as I watched her eyes nervously survey the room, I remembered what she had said about fourth grade affecting my college career.

“I’m trying to do some writing,” I said, making a mental note of a story idea, something funny that happened to me in the fourth grade.  I was smiling to myself as she walked away.

As for Gilbert—I don’t know where he went after high school, but I will always remember the incredible service he did me.  “There is no greater love than this—that you should lay down your life for your friends.”  In the eyes of a fourth grade girl, that is exactly what Gilbert did.