Posted 2:16 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022
"Irresistible Force Paradox"--Literacy Narrative
I was a child of boundless energy, consistently on the move from topic to topic and place to place. Teachers who were fond of me described me as extroverted, creative, and strong-willed; however, the vast majority of my teachers described me as disruptive, wild, and misbehaving. It wasn’t until fifth grade that the enormity of my personality was truly made apparent to me, not until Mr. Holiday.
Now, there are two facts you must know before I can continue this story. The first fact is that I, at eleven years old, was an unstoppable force with an autonomous disposition. The second fact is, Mr. Holiday was an immovable object. If you are at all familiar with the introductory concepts of physics, then you understand the impossibility of these two facts coexisting side by side, or rather, these two personalities coexisting in the same classroom.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Holiday to look at me and be decidedly upset with my presence in his class. To be completely unbiased, I was all those things they said I was. I was disruptive, vivacious, and I couldn’t follow directions to save my life. In hindsight, I was just a walking ad for undiagnosed ADHD.
Mr. Holiday seemed to believe he liked children, that he was good with them. What other proof did he need than that of his own child, whose accomplishments were frequently thrust in our faces. It is my personal belief that Mr. Holiday did not tolerate children let alone like them.
Fifth grade culminated in a final essay, and essays had never been my friend. I had a hard time learning to read, and an even harder time learning to write. While my stories were always creative and they mostly fit the prompts, points were consistently taken off for grammatical or spelling errors. My ever-restless self couldn't sit still long enough to finish essays half of the time, and to make matters worse, in the previous year, my teacher had to sit me down and explain that capitalization had rules, and you couldn’t throw in capital letters wherever you wanted.
So, when we were told to pick a historical event and write about its impact, I was dreading it. The entire grade, however, was awash with what topics they were going to choose. It was our final major project before we were officially done with elementary school and on our way to middle school. Knowing this was our final assignment was not the only incentive though.
Our class was the first group of students to get Chromebooks. Our use was limited, monitored closely, and we had only had them roughly a month. We weren’t even allowed to take them out of the classroom yet. However, if our typing skills proved sufficient, we were allowed to do our research and type our essays on the Chromebooks. Here is where the trouble really started.
We spent two weeks taking typing tests and practicing with the Chromebooks. Then we were given a final typing test. The keys were covered, and our hands were watched to make sure our fingers were in the proper positions. Indexes on F and J, thumbs hovering over the spacebar. The timers were started and seconds later they were stopped. My words per minute had not been fast enough; I was to be exiled to pencil and paper for my crimes.
I’m sure Mr. Holiday was delighted in reviewing our results. I’m sure he was even more delighted to deem my typing skills insufficient. Despite my grief and my appeals, his mind would not change, and the project was started.
Consistently scoring below the average on writing assignments, and then being one of three other people to have to physically write out their essays, made me hate this assignment passionately. During our allotted class time to work, I was unfocused and lackadaisical. Then it hit me, I was feeding into Mr. Holiday’s expectations. Spite is a powerful thing. Now, am I saying I put my all into this final essay to spite a quickly aging sixty-two-year-old man who gained no other satisfaction in life than that of making children suffer, no, I’m not saying that. But I am also not denying it.
I decided then and there that this was going to be the single best essay I had ever written: no grammatical errors, no spelling mistakes, my sources were going to be cited perfectly. While I wasn’t allowed to use the Chromebooks in class to type my paper, no one could stop me from staying up late and using my computer at home.
With my mother’s help and several hours of dedication, I was finally confident in a piece of writing. I felt good about what I was handing in, and I was proud that I defied Mr. Holiday’s expectations and typed the paper.
I remember the exact look on his face when I handed in something typed instead of written. It was a sort of supercilious mirth. A look he was fond of giving me when my actions fell in line with his expectations. He wasn’t expecting a good paper from me, he probably wasn’t even expecting something decent. But I held my head high and I smiled back at him as he added it to his stack.
A week later a rubric was placed on my desk. An A-minus in red ink was circled at the bottom of the paper. I remember his words so clearly as he saw my delight. “Good job, Marlee. I even ran it through a plagiarizer to make sure the work was your own.”
My first thoughts were not, who says that to an eleven-year-old, which in hindsight it should have been, but of accomplishment and pride. I had always taken pride in everything I turned in. I had always loved telling stories and seeing people’s joy as they read them, but this was the first time everything had finally come together.
I knew then, as I watched Mr. Holiday walk back to his desk, that I could do anything I set my mind to. My grammatical skills hadn’t miraculously improved, but that was ok because I could work harder to make up for it. I was never going to let someone else decide I was a bad student again.