Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Mrs. Robinson

by Pam Ripling

Sorry to be tardy. I was messing with my locker. Sometimes it sticks. Anyway, yeah, I had a really embarrassing thing happen once in school. I was in tenth grade, I think. It was so awful, to me, that I kinda blocked it out.

I was a good kid. I never swore, didn't cheat (much), didn't cut class. I didn't smoke, got average grades, teachers pretty much thought I was okay. I was always respectful. I wasn't that popular, but I had friends.

Mrs. Robinson was my gym teacher. She was sorta new to the school, and younger than all the other P.E. instructors. So I think she tried harder. Tried harder to be tough, and maybe even a little mean. I didn't like teachers who yelled, and this particular teacher was quickly getting a bad reputation among my small group of peers. I joined their ranks in trash talking, although I didn't really feel that great about it.

There was a popular song around then, made even more popular by a movie about a character with the same name. Mrs. Robinson. There is a refrain in the song that goes, "and here's to you, Mrs. Robinson..." One day I thought I'd be cool and while my friends' eyes were on me, I belted out that refrain in the locker room, lifting my middle finger high into the airspace above my head. I didn't have to turn around to know that Mrs. R was standing right behind me. My friends' horrified expressions said it all.

Like I said, I was a good kid.

Pam Ripling is the author of middle-grade mystery, LOCKER SHOCK! Buy it at Quake, Fictionwise or Amazon today! E-book version now available for your Kindle! Visit Pam at www.BeaconStreetBooks.com.

8 comments:

chris v said...

I'd love to have seen your friends' faces! It's always when you do something outrageous that you get caught. ha!

Norm Cowie said...

Then what happened?

Norm

http://fangplace.blogspot.com

Mary Cunningham said...

I'm with Norm. THEN what happened!

Martin Bartloff said...

Pam, That's ironic I was just listening to Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" yesterday.
I had a hard time imagining you doing something like that :-) So you almost embarrassed yourself all over again letting us know. jk.

Anyway, did you get in trouble?

--Martin

http://martinbartloff.blogspot.com/

Legendary Lights said...

Actually, to her credit, Mrs. Robinson chose to ignore my badly timed comment. P.E. teachers have to be thick skinned, don't you think? I, however, was mortified beyond belief and just slunk away into the crowd of girls. You can bet I never, ever, did anything like that again.

If you don't count that lady that almost plowed into me on the 405 the other day.

-P

Mary Welk said...

Yeah, we all had moments like that back in high school. You wanted to be cool, part of the gang, and it always ended up wrong. Boy, am I glad those days are gone forever!

Ophelia Julien said...

Well, Pam, "Jesus loves you more than you will know"!! Great post!

Anonymous said...

I just think how hurt Mrs. Robinson must have been. You're lucky, as a young teacher, I would probably have marched you right down to the office for disrespect. (while blinking back tears)