Super Short Stories

Narrative Essay

When I was nine years old-and going on ten-I had a very creative, influential teacher. I remember more of what she taught me than all my other teachers combined. This particular lesson I remember even more clearly than most for two reasons: she had us get up and actually learn the topic hands-on, and I gave what my fourth grade mind thought to be a quick, witty answer.

It was a fairly warm day, marking an unofficial beginning to Spring. My classmates and I crowded ourselves through the door to the modular that had been our classroom for the past two years due to there being not enough room in the ancient elementary school to hold all of us. I scrambled to my seat and got out my things to begin the morning exercises that were always on the board right next to the day's agenda. We sped through going over the answers to the work we had just done, nothing unusual for us. Our teacher wanted to get on to the concepts that mattered just a bit more than the repetitive math and reading that we did every single day.

I sat anxiously in my seat, waiting and wondering about what we were to learn in our history lesson that day. I never really liked history after her class, because no one had a flair for teaching it quite like she did. She announced to us that we were entering a unit on the American Civil War. We stared around the room curiously, trying to process this information. None of us had ever heard of such a thing, but I knew that many of us were eager to find out just what it was.

Our teacher passed out a small packet of information to each of us, also not an abnormal practice for her. She proceeded to read it aloud and we followed along. It was about another word that was new to us: slavery. To a fourth grader, these were just words on a page, for the most part. It didn't mean anything at all to me, except for the occasional thought I had about why something like this would happen at all, how people could be so mean as to do something like that to another human being. My brain just couldn't understand.

If I thought that was hard to understand, trying to understand just how something like the day to day life of a slave was even harder. Luckily for us, our teacher knew just how to teach this concept to us: she was going to reenact it.

She had us stand up and line up in our classic grade school line: single file, in alphabetical order by last name. We were beyond used to it at this point and took our places without causing any trouble. We were too excited for that anyway. Whispers rose up among us, wondering what we could be doing, where we could be going. We knew that wherever we were going couldn't be that far away, because we hadn't received any notes for our parents to sign for a field trip.

We were hushed as we began our short march to our still unknown destination. We were led straight to the school gym and right up to the steps to the stage. We had come to this very place often for practicing for our school concerts, and with our reading groups, for they stored all of the books in filing cabinets at the back of the stage at this time. Making a walk like this always made us feel accomplished, for either purpose. It told us the end of another school year was drawing to a close or that we had moved up a level with our reading. That day it made us excited, and perhaps just a little nervous. That is, until our teacher announced our reason for being there.

She turned and faced us and said that we were going to experience just a little of what it was like to be a slave. Of course we couldn't really experience it, but we could understand it a bit better this way. Idle chatter soon broke out as we stood and waited a few moments. Our principal came through the double doors facing us. Silence filled the air right away. This principal terrified us all. None of us wanted to get into any trouble, especially not on this day. We hardly ever left the classroom and we wanted to give our teacher an incentive to take us out of it more.

As the principal walked up on the stage, so did our teacher. They stood on each side as we stood in a straight line facing the back of the stage. The curtains were closed, so it was a bit darker than we were used to. It gave the scene a bit of an eerie feeling, but we were still too excited to care.

Our teacher explained to us that we were going to act out what a slave auction was like. She said that she had invited our principal down to be the slave owner coming to the auction for another slave. Our principal said that she was going to ask each one of us what we were good at as she went down the line and that she would feel our muscles, like the slave owners did, she said, to see how strong we are.

I was pretty far down the line, so I had plenty of time to think of what I was going to say. I listened carefully to what the others were saying, things like “I can play soccer,” or “I'm good at math.” My mind raced back to about three weeks prior when I had, for the first time ever, made pancakes all on my own, with only adult supervision, no adult assistance. I smiled, as I thought I had the perfect thing to say.

When the principal came to me, I was beyond prepared. She asked me the same question she asked everyone else, and I triumphantly told her, “I can make pancakes.”

She was clearly taken aback by my answer, or maybe it was my confidence, but she soon processed my witty response. She laughed and said, “I'll take you home with me. I love pancakes!”

She moved on down the line and I stood there smiling happily, for I had thought of something that was actually beneficial to her, something that my classmates had failed to do.

I had been so proud of my answer that day. Looking back, it may seem quite silly and something only a child would think of, but I felt like I had won back then. I felt like I had truly accomplished something by catching our principal off guard, and proving to myself something my classmates already knew and told me all the time: that I was indeed smart. I don't think I actually believed their words until this point in my life, when I thought of an out-of-the-box answer to such a simple question.

This event made me realize that I had potential and that I could do something great with my life. I held tight to this hope for a very long time, and I let go of a little bit of my doubt, and fear, that I always had that told me I didn't have the correct answer to anyone's questions. This memorable event truly changed my life for the better.