Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty Macdonald

Author:Betty Macdonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

10

Night School

UNTIL I STARTED NIGHT SCHOOL, my life was one long sweep of mediocrity. While my family and friends were enjoying the distinction of being labelled the prettiest, most popular, best dancer, fastest runner, highest diver, longest breath-holder-under-water, best tennis player, most fearless, owner of the highest arches, tiniest, wittiest, most efficient, one with the most allergies or highest salaried, I had to learn to adjust to remarks such as, ‘My, Mary has the most beautiful red hair I’ve ever seen, it’s just like burnished copper and so silky and curly—oh yes, Betty has hair too, hasn’t she? I guess it’s being so coarse is what makes it look thick.’

Then I started to night school to learn shorthand and after ten years of faithful attendance, realized that now I was eligible for some kind of a medal for being the slowest-witted, most-unable-to-be-taught and longest-attender-at-school-studying-one subject.

I went to every night school in the city of Seattle, both paid and free, studied under expert teachers, but I couldn’t learn shorthand. It had something to do with my co-ordination I believe, because I was never able to learn arm-movement writing in school either.

Mary, as I have pointed out, was never in favour of my attendance at night school. She thought it was a waste of time and she was right, but learning shorthand got to be an obsession with me, like swimming the English Channel. I bought a book of stories in shorthand and for years mouthed them out on the streetcar riding to and from work—worked at memorizing the Gregg dictionary, symbol by symbol—I spent from seven to nine or six to eight of most of my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for ten years in some shorthand class. But at my jobs the minute anyone ever said to me, ‘Take a letter’, or ‘Get your note-book, Miss Bard’, I would get such a case of buck fever I’d make wiggly little scriggles instead of smooth curves and little lines, and would get far behind trying to remember whether ‘a’ went on the inside or outside of the angles.

Night school differed from day school, I learned, not only in time of day but in atmosphere and type of students. Day school students, who were usually young, career-conscious people, eager to get jobs and get started (the fools), exuded an air of cheerful self-confidence.

Night school students, predominately young foreigners and old Americans suddenly faced with the necessity for earning their own livings, were even in times of great prosperity badly handicapped by language difficulties, the wrong colour of skin or old stiff fingers. Nevertheless they zealously, gallantly and in spite of the inadequacy of their tools, tried to carve niches for themselves in the stone face of the business world.

Often when I attended the Public Evening School, which was almost free, my shorthand class would be comprised entirely of old ladies and young Japanese girls. The old ladies worked feverishly at their speed studies and, over and above the teacher’s precise nasal dictation of

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