UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

NEW SPECIMENS OLD SPECIMENS THE SCIENTIST MY LOG CONTACT ME
2002-05-15 - 8:02 p.m.

BECOMING MRS. ROBINSON

I�m turning into Mrs. Robinson. No, not THAT Mrs. Robinson. I could never be that Mrs. Robinson. I�m talking about someone else. I�m talking about the Mrs. Robinson, who worked at Einstein Elementary School and was my second grade teacher.

I couldn�t tell you what Mrs. Robinson looked like although I think she had dark hair. I remember that she was pregnant because that was the reason that our second grade class still got to go to the milk machine, stick our nickels in, and drink chocolate milk for snack in the middle of the afternoon. What I really remember was that I was happy in her class and that was no mean feat. I was often bored in school then but I don�t remember being bored in her class. If I had my work done early, she let me play SRA games with Stevie. In those days, I was quite fond of both SRA games and Stevie.

Most of what I remember about her, though, was her sweater. She had a very soft black sweater with little buttons all down the front. It often sat on the back of her chair, wherever in the room her chair was located. She often left it on there even on the occasions she loaned her chair to some lucky student.

I once got to wear that sweater. I was working at her bulletin board on a project that I was thrilled to be a part of. We were doing a mosaic of the solar system on that bulletin board. I don�t remember if everyone got to work on it or only some people but I was pasting up all those little scraps of paper that day. For some reason, those little scraps of paper felt very, very heavy. And then I got cold, as cold as I ever have been, and I couldn�t get warm.

I told Mrs. Robinson how cold I was. She felt my forehead. She then told me to work a little longer. I did but I was still miserably cold. I told her again and she said, �Why don�t you get my sweater and put it on?� No one I knew other than Mrs. Robinson had ever worn that sweater. The sleeves were much too long. She rolled them up for me so they would not trail in the paste. She felt my forehead again and then moved on. I shivered and pasted until lunch. Then I went home�and didn�t return for a month. I had pneumonia.

So why do I think I�m turning into Mrs. Robinson. It�s a small reason. A silly reason. It�s the sweater. For the last three days, I�ve been wearing a black cotton sweater with small buttons down the front over my top because we�ve had in-between weather that requires layers. I usually wear that sweater only as part of my black sweater set but it was near at hand as I dressed in the dark so I didn�t wake Mr. Philately. But I didn�t think of Mrs. Robinson until today.

Today was the day that, instead of hanging the sweater on the hanger on the back of the door, I hung it on the back of my chair. I did so in my haste to get it out of the way quickly as I tried to clean up the cup of coffee I spilled this morning and it never got on to the hook. I came back from lunch and there it was: shades of Mrs. Robinson.

Now all I need to do is lend it to some child in need.

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