View from Saturday (9781439132012) by Konigsburg E. L

Author:Konigsburg, E. L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1996-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

4

Mrs. Olinski sat, waiting, until all the members of her class were seated. Then she introduced herself. “I am Mrs. Olinski. I am one of those people who gets to use all those good parking spaces at the mall.” She turned toward the blackboard and wrote in big, block letters:

MRS. OLINSKI

PARAPLEGIC

As she wrote paraplegic, Mrs. Olinski spelled it out, “P-A-R-A-P-L-E-G-I-C. It means that I am paralyzed from the waist down.”

Mrs. Olinski had thought about what she would say to this, her first sixth-grade class in ten years. She wrote it all down, revised, memorized, and rehearsed until she could deliver her lines with a light touch. Her voice held steady, but her hands did not, and the O of Olinski was the rough shape of an oil spill.

Then a student in the back—Hamilton Knapp—stood up. “Excuse me, Mrs. Olinski,” he said, hesitating slightly, mispronouncing her name. “I can’t see what you’ve written. Could you write a little higher on the blackboard, please?”

Mrs. Olinski replied, “Not at the moment,” and managed an embarrassed smile. The rest of her prepared remarks flew out of her head. She thought she had thought of everything. But here she was with a problem about sight lines to the blackboard. Given time, she would figure it out, but she wished it had not come up on the very first hour of her very first day back.

After Hamilton Knapp sat down, she laughed nervously. “I was about to tell you that being a paraplegic does not mean that there is anything wrong with my hearing or my eyesight, but I guess we’ll have to figure out what to do about the eyesight of those of you who will be seated in the back of the room.”

Mrs. Olinski decided that she would write nothing more on the blackboard for the rest of the morning but would leave what she had already written right there so that she could check it out after lunch. She would return before the rest of the class, wheel herself to the back of the room while it was still empty, and check out the sight lines.

She took the roll, checking on the spelling and pronunciation of each child’s name, and passed out general supplies and the books for the social studies she would be teaching. Finally, she assigned seats in alphabetical order, last names first.

The year of her accident, Mrs. Olinski had had two Jennifers in her class. This semester, Jennifer was out of fashion, and J-names for boys were in. She had J-names from Jared to Julian, including two Jasons. When she returned from lunch and saw CRIPPLE written on the blackboard, she knew more than the names had changed. Sixth graders had changed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.