My very first day at the school, I reported for duty with the receptionist, who informed me I would be teaching third grade under the supervision of Miss Webb. She then wanted to introduce me to the principal, Mr. Friend, but she said he was on the phone with the superintendent, Mr. Peoples. Thinking surely she was pulling my leg, and not wanting my "gullible Jamie" reputation to follow me to yet another new setting, I laughed out loud.
I'll never forget how her expression changed, and her eyebrows pointed behind me implying that someone important was behind me. When I turned around, the door to the principal's office was open, and there stood Mr. Friend with the nameplate clearly reading "Cecil Friend, Principal." Gulp. She was not kidding! Mr. Peoples was real, too. It only sounded like something off Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.
Little did I know, but Mr. Friend was amused with me from the get-go. My last day of teaching, he called me in his office and secretly gave me a going away present, something he had never done for any other student teacher. I was clearly his favorite. I cherish the memory to this day. Knowing I was leaving for Thailand the day after graduation, Mr. Friend gave me something to remind me of my days at Elm Mott. It was a ceramic coffee cup exactly like his, in the shape of a cowboy boot.
Mr. Friend enjoyed all the crazy things that seemed to spontaneously occur whenever I was around. The laminating machine caught on fire the first time I ever attempted to use it. The copy machine had a blatant vendetta against me, and I never bothered learning how to use the mimeograph, or whatever it was called that dyed my hands blue. One day Mr. Friend came into my classroom to find me all alone with my head in my hands as I was praying, begging God to spare me the humiliation of admitting I had now managed to break the overhead projector. I opened my eyes and flipped the switch again. Nothing happened. I was contemplating how on earth to get into the machine to remove the bulb, assuming it had burnt out, when Mr. Friend slipped in, plugged it in, and walked out.
Electrical things and I never were on the greatest of terms. That same year, I thought I had broken the hand mixer in our duplex while making chocolate cake. My roommate was sitting at the table studying when the noise stopped, and she just looked at me with one of her bemused "this-is-not-funny" expressions. I had no idea what I had done. I turned it off and on, and nothing happened. I even checked to see if it was plugged in. It was. When my roommate rolled her eyes and said, "Plug it back in" - I was offended. "The other end!" she added. Oh, so it had come unplugged, but not from the wall. Sheepishly I plugged it in, but didn't think to put the blades back in the bowl first. Chocolate cake batter began to swirl and spin all over the kitchen and all over me. I think my roommate picked up her books and went to study someplace else. She didn't even help me clean up my mess!
That was such a typical thing to happen back then. It all stems from a bad childhood trauma with an electric fan that shorted out and shocked me. I was always a tad paranoid after that. I am so glad to have (mostly) outgrown my terror of all things electronic. Occasionally the copy machine gets jammed, but I only partially freak out.
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