First love

Early in the eighth year of my school career (i.e. sixth grade I include pre. K and Kindergarten) I was approached by my sister to join the “dramatic expressions” club that was just starting. It was explained to me to be a: “drama club but not”. So, in an attempt to move up my intelligence factor aside from the above average classes in which I was enrolled, I joined. The first day we met in a classroom with which I was unfamiliar, with a teacher with which I was unfamiliar; after all, she taught level one classes and I was too smart for those (I admit I was arrogant).

Ms. Rosskopf. She was an eccentric Jewish (I’m referring to the physical characteristics, not the religion, though she was that as well) woman with puffy black and white streaked hair that bunched around her fifty something year old head. She was truly the crazy English teacher that loved her job and wanted everyone to love English the way she did. Her classroom was cluttered with an infinite number of papers, a magnet board, magnets, pencils, gel pens which at the time were all the rage, books, folders, binders and other countless learning tools (junk) at all times.

Our first project as a club, after two months of meetings, was a dramatic reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe. I was selected to be the reader for the part of the narrator. I was asked to wear all black (I blame this situation for another pattern of behavior on my part) and be prepared for a long read. She and I worked on projection, breathing, timing, and pathos. The show went on with only a minor hitch: a hoarse throat had altered my voice, killing my volume and my consistency in tone. Despite this minor setback, the show was a success and we went on to do more readings (and yes, I got to star in more as well). We wrote poetry and prose in our meetings. I wrote poetry at every spare second of my life. A love of language had been discovered in me, a love that had been dormant all of my previous years.

In the coming years I went on to achieve more and more in English, though I fought it every step of the way. I eventually dropped “dramatic expressions” in favor of being a hooligan with my friends (as all 6th, 7th, and 8th graders are) but my talent in the subject of English continued to be noticed by teachers. In my freshman year of high school I enrolled in Spanish and a higher English class, finding, as Richard Rodriguez called it: “the lonely company of books”.

As the years passed I would read and listen to music every chance I got. Math and Science, though valued in my mind, were what happened between English, Reading my books, Spanish and Government. I never had a love of government however, my teacher recognized my talent and encouraged me to be more outspoken, making me a more confident person and therefore a better writer. The next year I excelled in my English and Spanish classes and, for an unknown reason, took up a Russian class as well. Languages are my life, they were never unkind, they never abandoned me, they gave me power. After all, sticks and stones may break my bones but simple insults will never harm me.