Or being in a play. Yes, I know that doesn't fit and it isn't recent but it's the story the Fairy Queen wants to tell today. So settle in, or go check your email or your stock portfolio or your facebook friends, whatever, I'm still telling.
In 6th grade, the FQ was a lone smartypants good girl in a classroom full of delinquents and weirdos. The school loaded up the new teacher out of carelessness or hazing, or both. But my formidable mother, The Empress, bullied the school into swirling me into that mix. She was convinced that Ms. N - young, creative, idealistic - would be good for me. The school obeyed The Empress; you just have to. So there the Fairy Queen was, hanging onto Ms. N's every semi-rebellious word while trying not to make eye contact with her classmates.
As the holidays approached, Ms. N offered to take on the Christmas pageant (this was the late 70s, people...yes, we still called them that). Little did the school know that Ms. N had higher ambitious than first graders dressed as snowflakes. No, Ms. N was going to put on a play.
She bugged me to audition (auditions! for an elementary school play!) but I refused. The very last thing on earth I wanted to do was stand up in front of a room full of people (grown ups!) and make speeches that weren't even my words. Ms. N relented at last and, in honor of my neurotic powers of observation and twitchy attention to detail, made me stage manager. That meant I organized the scripts, the props, the rehearsal schedules. I was timekeeper, errand runner, second in command. I shadowed Ms. N's every step and memorized every single second of that corny play.
When the girl playing Mrs. Agnes Nelson said she could come to the dress rehearsal but none of the three performances, Ms. N and I snorted in unison. What a lack of professionalism! But then Ms. N turned to me and said lightly, "You do it. You know the part."
"I know all the parts."
"Yes, sweetie, but this is the one we need. Besides, I think Mrs. Nelson's skirt will fit you perfectly."
And just like that, I was in a play. At first glance it wasn't very Christmasy. A group of people on a small plane crash land in the boonies. While awaiting rescue, they share Christmas memories because, of course, they are all trying to get home for Christmas. Mrs. Agnes Nelson wore a long dark skirt, a high-necked white blouse, and a very fine purple pillbox hat. I loved those clothes so much I wanted to take them home and sleep in them.
I became Mrs. Agnes Nelson, who, it turned out, was a retired teacher. Who, incidentally, gave the play's most dramatic speech, about all the students she'd known and taught and loved. All that time backstage, accidentally memorizing the whole damn play, and I never thought to put the pieces together. Until I put on Mrs. Agnes Nelson's natty pillbox hat, I had no idea what the play was actually about.
I did it. I played her three times. It's been something like 35 years but I still remember the long, straight, modest skirt, the scratchy stiff-collared blouse, and that hat. How I wish I had that hat. I was Mrs. Agnes Nelson as I stood before the audience I could not see and spoke of my students, three decades of them, and how I almost thought I could seem them, right out there.
I don't know what happened to Ms. N. I just know that after 15 years of jobs, the Fairy Queen found her calling. She's a teacher. And on crazy hat day she wears this:
Thanks, Ms. N, and thanks, Mrs. Agnes Nelson. I can see you both, right out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment