Bag of Imperfections

It was just a matter of how to get from here to there. 

For the first time all year, the room was enormous. It had always felt stifling, it had always smelled of other people's laundry soap or dirty socks, there was always the fine dusting of white that left it's mark on an elbow or the back of a head. 

But in that moment, the expanse of the room could swallow me whole. 

Determined, I spent a reasonable amount of time debating the logistics. They seemed impossible, but I had made it that far, so there had to be a way. 

Except there wasn't. 

The black arrowed hands of the clock that looked like a square bulging eyeball ticked onward

tick-tock

and burned the insides of my ears.


My body was unmovable. I willed myself to get up just as I had twenty or three minutes ago but I could not. She wouldn't leave. She wouldn't leave the front of the room and that is where I needed to go. I wished I could hear what she was saying, but the noises bubbled up around me, the cadence of the most awesome of days foaming at the rectangular windows, two by two, all in a row. Summer was on the cusp of Time. And I had a desk full of papers that needed to get into a tiny gray metal can, unnoticed. 

Tick -Tock

Inside the darkness of my desk, I methodically arranged the papers so that I could stack as many as I could, fold them all together as one, then fold and crease and fold and crease until my imperfections could fit discreetly into the palm of my hand. 

Tick -Tock

I swallowed, and wished for a drink or a lollipop, and for her to move. Just move, please please please I wished, squeezing my eyes tight, blinking three times real fast before opening. 

Tik-tok tik-tok

I ran my tongue over my dry lips, felt my body begin to shake from the inside. But Wait! She was moving! Her large body began to turn, her blue daisy patterned skirt clung to her stockings , and the sound of her heels brought me giddy joy because it meant she was moving away from the front of the classroom and away from the tiny gray metal can. 

Clickety-click 

I quickly gathered up more squares and shoved them into my fists while keeping my arms inside the desk and throwing my head back in a dramatic fashion to chime in with a laugh because surely she just thinks I am back here laughing with my friends, making plans for summer vacation.

Tick 

Tock

Clickety Click.

"Ah-hem", my teacher bellowed. I felt the hot air of her stale liverwurst on my forehead, and looked up at her with only my eyes." How's it going back here?"

She awkwardly shimmied herself up to rest her right hip and thigh on the corner of my desk, which was filled to the brim with papers my mother should have signed with a Bic pen almost out of ink months ago. 


 My throat was closing. I tried disappearing by closing my eyes again, but my left eyelid was twitching to the rhythm of my pounding heart, so before I counted to seventy five in my head, I opened them. I opened them to see she had a large black garbage bag twisted and rolled around her hand and wrist. 

"I've already called home", she stated, in a tone that told me she wasn't kidding."Your parents will be expecting this trash bag, so you'd better get started filling it up."  

I spent the last twenty minutes of the third grade filling a black plastic bag with obnoxiously crinkly yellow drawstrings, the kind normally meant for stuffing with leaves in the fall, or spreading out on the floor to do an art project, in the back of the classroom with every single paper that I deemed not able to come home in my take home folder on Fridays for almost ten months. I had meticulously scrutinized my work, my colors, my mathematical equations, my subjects and predicates, my early division, my grades, my mistakes, my imperfections, before shoving them to the far corners of my dark metal desk because...because I was afraid they were not good enough.  

One hundred and eighty- two days later, on the last day of the third grade, I rode the bus home and twisted the obnoxious yellow strings around my fingers over and over again twist release twist release, with each turn bag shifted from the inside of my left foot, to the inside of my right foot and back again, as I wondered exactly where one should keep a  Plastic Bag of Imperfections.~

There are days when I am my toughest critic, the judge with the straight face staring back in the mirror, my own worst enemy. On those days, my bags are full of my Imperfections. 

If you enjoyed this post, please take a few seconds to share it! If you are new here, thank you for stopping by! To receive email delivery of new content on Amommaly, you may enter your email in the box below.  

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner