Mrs. MacMurray at Overland Avenue School

Walking (in my imagination) toward recording the tips and the scene pops into my mind as if it were yesterday (though it was 60 years ago).

I'm 12, in the 6th grade at Overland Avenue School in West Los Angeles. I'm in front of an easel painting with poster paints onto newsprint in my 6th grade classroom, surrounded by other students doing the same. The teacher who wasn't nice to some kids and had singled me out for that position from the first day I came to her class, is walking up and down the aisles looking at the work. I'm painting a Spanish lady in a long yellow gown, but each time I sense the teacher coming down my aisle I panic and try to change the colors. Each time she comes around looks at it, the colors get muddier. She smiles slightly, like she always does when she says unkind things to me, and finally says, "All I can see is mud."

She's right. That's all that's on the paper. Water, dripping pigment, wrinkled paper beginning to tear from wetness, and all of it the color of mud.

I guess it's relevant because that's what came up.

She did so many terrible things to me that I didn't want to go to school anymore, but I lived across the street from the school yard and I had relatively normal parents -- there was no real way to get out of it.

Not relevant but just so you aren't left with this cruel scene in your mind, I was visiting home from college 6 years later and, on hearing that she was tormenting my baby brother in the same way, I walked into her classroom -- she was alone -- and scared but furiously angry I told her she would not to to my brother what she did to me or I would report her to the authorities. She watched me with slight interest and didn't say a word. I don't remember all I said, but I didn't cry and my jaw didn't tremble and I let her know what I thought of her and I left.

Apparently, she stopped tormenting my brother after that. So she must have heard something.

Now, to stop her from being a player in my adult life. I have to take the next step for that, and I don't think I'll do it just now. But I know what it is, as does anyone who was at the Retreat in Greece. It's heavy. I think I'll dodge for right now.