This is the name tag that was stuck to the side of my desk for my entire third grade year. South River Elementary, Mrs. Graff. Graf? I can't remember. And do you know why it doesn't bother me that I can't remember how to spell her name? Because she can't spell mine either.
MeLLissa Pappas.
BURN!
I was young and fragile (I think I was 9) and I never thought that my teacher, the one who TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING and showed me what to do and what to read during quiet reading hours and sent me over to The Alamo building for science enrichment and showed me how to make a cardboard box to show me a solar eclipse without burning my eyes out and sent me to music class in the PA room to learn all about two part harmonies and lined me up for recess and gave me the building blocks of multiplication and long devision and took away my pencil with the times tables on it (it was orange and I'm kind of shocked it's not mixed in with all this stuff) COULDN'T GET MY NAME RIGHT?
I remember finding it the last week of school when we all cleaned out desks out. Mixed in with all the Lisa Frank notebooks (stay tuned!) erasers shaped like animals and bugs and cars and rainbows purchased with nickels and dimes at the school store and pencils in every color and shade was the lie Mrs. Graf(f) had been telling all year. I pulled the name tag off my desk and stared at it in horror. I never saw it. It was on the FRONT of my desk so SHE could see it and obviously she knew how to really write my name, I was in love with learning at 9 and was totally a self-declared teacher's pet, shame free, and she never even thought to tell me she messed up huge. I mean, fix it some day after we left for the day! Five seconds it would have taken her. I stared in shock as I packed up all my art supplies and rulers and pencil sharpeners. I remember Erika laughed. I was heart broken and it made my third grade career feel like a lie.
Good bye cruel memory. Joke's on Mrs. Graf(f). I can't remember how to write in cursive anymore.
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