Subscriptions

  When I was in 8th grade, my homeroom teacher was Mrs. Brown.  She taught chorus.  I remember that she was short and had very frizzy hair.  Our class competed with other classes on how many magazine subscriptions a student could sell.  The students with the most subscriptions could win prizes.  The class that sold the most won a big prize and the bragging rights that our class was better than the rest.

 Mrs. Brown selected me as the keeper of the records.  I had everyone's name on a tally sheet, and I had to notate the subscriptions sold.  It seemed like an easy task, but I just couldn't get it right.  Kids were screaming at me, saying that I cheated them out of prizes.  Mrs. Brown scolded me for doing a bad job.  I was very embarrassed.  

 During this time, I was getting beat up every day by the boys in our school.  This screw-up by me just made things worse.  Most of the girls in our class stopped speaking to me.  They had been the only support for me, as the boys beat me up.  Now, everyone hated me.  I had been a standout in chorus, but Mrs. Brown didn't seem to like me anymore.  It was a huge scandal.  I tried to rectify the tallies, but the assignment was just too overwhelming.  I realized that I would never grow up to be an accountant.  

 There was one girl who stood up for me, when all of my world was crumbling around me.  Her name was Gayle Anderson.  She recognized that I had talents in other areas besides accounting.  She suggested I go into English and the Arts.  Writing was my escape from all of this trouble.  It still is.