by Donna Hruska

May 24, 1966

---

Remembered Experience Maternal Debut – Writing Class

“I am not! I don’t care what you say!” my son yelled back at the little knot of boys standing on our driveway. He banged in the door and threw himself on the sofa, the tears rushing down his red seven-year-old face in muddy streaks.

“Oh, Mom,” he cried as I sat down beside him, “nobody likes me. I don’t have any friends any more!”

I pulled his head onto my shoulder to give him a chance to cry it out. There was no need to ask what had caused the neighborhood squabble. I had been watching it develop for some time. It had begun a few weeks ago when he had developed a friendship for a little girl down the street. When the other boys called him a “sissy” and a “lover” they discovered that he couldn’t take teasing. Usually he just became angry and yelled back at them, but today he had allowed his feelings to be hurt.

My whole being ached in sympathy for him. How painful life can be for the very young! How vulnerable he looked as he wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. What help could I give him? I knew it would do no good to tell him that this would pass in time. To a child, one unhappy day is endless–a week is eternity. Nor did he want to hear a lecture on how to win friends and influence people.

What I could do was let him know that I understood. Putting my arms around him, I told him the story of a long-ago little girl who had lost her friends, too.

I was eight years old when we moved from Pinedale to Leesburg. It seemed to me that we were moving to the city for Pinedale had only 250 people while Leesburg had over 900. I didn’t know the population figures then, but I did know that while I had been attending a two room school in Pinedale, my new school had a separate room for every grade. That was enough to convince me that my new town was big time.

I had been just one of the kids in Pinedale. My father had been principal of the grade and high schools there for a number of years. He had bought a movie projector and started showing movies in the little towns near by. By the time I, a quiet, shingle-bobbed little girl of no special talents, went to school, he had left teaching behind and had a number of theatres in the larger villages around us. This had no reality for me or for my friends, for he did not have a theatre in Pinedale.

When we moved, however, things were different. My father did have a theatre in Leesburg and the other children were well aware of it before I ever set my foot in the school-room door.

I entered the fourth grade classroom that first day in January and took the seat assigned to me. I was painfully aware of the other children’s eyes on me as I sat in my seat that first day, scarcely able to speak, wondering if I would have any friends.

These were the early years of World War II and the effects of the great depression had not disappeared in our rural area. To these children who had to scrimp and save to get the price of a movie ticket, it seemed that the daughter of the theatre owner must be immensely wealthy.

I was immediately popular. Everyone wanted to be my friend, to sit by me, to be my partner in games. My training in the two-room school must have been good, for I was soon making the best grades in class. The teacher called on me often and give me special jobs to do. The effect of all this was quite heady.

I soon began to feel that I was pretty important. But the bubble burst.

It took some time, but I finally began to realize that the other children expected me to take my friends to the movies free. About the same time my friends realized that I was unable to do this. My good grades and the teacher’s obvious liking for me added fuel to the flames.

One day at the end of class I was given the much-coveted job of erasing the blackboards. When I was finished, my classmates were waiting for me outside.

“You just think you’re it because you’re smart and rich,” said one little girl who had been the queen bee in class before I came.

“Oh, she’s not so smart,” said another. “She’s just the teacher’s pet!”

I stared at them in bewilderment, unable to think of anything to say.

“Yeah, teacher’s pet! teacher’s pet!” the others took up the cry as I hurried past them, the tears streaming down my face.

“You’d better run, Miss Teacher’s Pet,” the first girl called after me. “There’s not anyone who’s going to be your friend from now on. Never! Never! Never!”

I ran all the way home. I burst through the kitchen door and ran straight to my father, who was sitting in the rocking chair, reading the paper.

“Oh, Daddy! Daddy!” I wailed. “They don’t like me. I don’t have any friends. They say I’m the teacher’s pet and rich.”

My whole body shook with sobs as he pulled me onto his lap.

“There, there,” he said as he patted my arm and stroked my hair. “Don’t you worry. They’re just jealous. There, there. Don’t cry. Daddy loves you.”

I don’t recall everything he said to me that afternoon, as we sat and rocked while it grew dark outside. But, I know that when I got up I knew that it was my problem, and though Daddy loved me very much, only I could solve it.

It wasn’t easy. How do you make a friend? Even harder, how do you regain a whole group of friends you have lost? You don’t do it by providing free movie tickets or ice cream cones all around. You don’t do it by being the smartest or by thinking of yourself first. I soon learned that. You do have to try harder.

You have to be a better sport than anyone else–do more than your share without appearing to take over. You have to be interested in the other person’s problems. But most of all–you have to care–really care– about others. That was the secret that I discovered in those long painful months in my childhood.

Could I pass that knowledge on to my own child, I wondered as I watched him go back outside. I doubted it. The most important lessons are often the most painfully learned.

But the tears that were silently slipping down my cheeks were not for my son. I knew that he would survive just as I had. The tears were for my father, for I had never known before how his heart must have ached that day.

##

COMMENTS ON: Late Learning Remembered Experience Maternal Debut

You have done an excellent re-write job on this theme and I enjoyed it this time so much more.

I feel that in starting out in Dramatic Immediacy….in the scene with the small boy….you get into the heart of the article.

The recall and reminiscent part is clear and smooth, although I feel still too overwritten….but acceptable since you do wish to cover your childhood….your father’s job….and then the reaction of the children at school….

That you must care about others…and do things for them…is the answer to the problem in your article and I think you put that across.

I like the ending a lot. It has impact and punch and something more….empathy and a nostalgic emotional pull. Any piece of writing that has that is……good.

I would try this on magazines like the religious ones, all of them: THE SIGN….AVE MARIA….. CATHOLIC DIGEST……EXTENSION MAGAZINE ….WAR CRY….TOGETHERNESS…..

KEEP WRITING!

AV

##