Oh, Miss Jones

We are choking with fog this morning; it is darker than usual too but I know my orchids love the humidity. “Fish Boy” (Costin) comes this morning, then I go to have my glasses adjusted and then, in all likelihood, I will wander all over the downtown peninsula doing errands and killing time.

On the weekend, another friend wrote to say she would be a sponsor of my play, so my newsletter provoked enough of a response from my friends to ensure that Presentation House can build a set worthy of my investment in this show.  Seriously: What a relief! I am flush with pride and gratitude to all my friends and for them.

I re-wrote the prologue to the play yesterday. It is (almost) in rhyming couplets. With each investment of time it gets better. I await the outcomes of the imminent workshop before tackling any revisions to the script

I have to say it: I totally rocked the ending. I think that’s my strongest literary feature: Structure. I consider myself an above average writer of opening and closing lines. And I know that this skill comes from Miss Jones in grade seven. She taught us how to plan what we write… okay, I am crying now. Oh, Miss Jones. What a gift you gave me.

I assumed for decades that everyone was as thrilled as I to learn what she taught us. I did not know I would come to love—and to need—to write. I did not know she was giving me language and setting me on a path to an inconceivable fulfillment. Oh, Miss Jones.

One day Miss Jones ended English class by returning to us the essays we had completed as an assignment. She would give them out in batches: “First, I am going to hand out the seven worst submissions.” She would generalize about the nature of the faults in them and then return them to the writers.

Now you might think that she was mean. She wasn’t. As she handed out the worst ones, she would say very encouraging things. She would say things such as: “The bravest writers fail.” Or: “We learn from our mistakes.” And she would say something encouraging to each person as she returned his or her paper.

And she would read the best one aloud to the class. And on the day I am writing about, when she was finished, I had no paper so at the end of the class I told her that I had handed my assignment in and that she had not returned it. She said she would “look into it” or something like that.

Every day at school, from the beginning of grade seven to the end of grade thirteen, there were school-wide announcements read to the entire school community at the beginning of the day and right, before classes resumed after lunch.

On the day my paper went missing, Mr. Pellman came on the PA to make his afternoon announcements and at the end he introduced a guest: Miss Jones. And Miss Jones told the whole school my essay was so good she wanted to read it to the whole school, not just our class because it had won some competition. Oh, Miss Jones. These returning tears say so much.