Still Me, After All These Years

by Ernie McCray

In a reflective mood the other day
I thought of people
who, in some way,
had something to do
with who I am today
and the first person who popped
up in my mind
was my very first school principal
standing tall in an image
that’s so memorable to me:
Big old head.
Big old shoulders.
Big old chest.
Big old beer belly.

And let me tell you:
She was mean!!!
Ornery as a hungry grizzly bear.

Sister Mary Benedict.
Unfortunately for me
I got to know her very well really quick
because, on my first day of kindergarten,
she whacked my knuckles to kingdom come
with a yardstick,
after I had dozed off
in a classroom
that was hot as burning coals in a fire pit
with no A/C,
just a little fan in a corner,
blowing across a shallow pan of water
as though that could affect the temperature
in a classroom in Tucson, Arizona
in late August or early September.

Oh, was she ever
a master of wielding a yardstick,
sometimes seemingly
grabbing it out of the air from nowhere
like a magic trick,
reminding me of a day
when we were out to play
and she was walking around
in just her nun garb,
as far as I could see,
like a military sentry,
and I look up and I see
that Rusty, the meanest dog in the neighborhood
had gotten free
and managed somehow
to get on the school grounds
and was charging towards her
bearing his canines with his full repertoire of snarly growling sounds,
and suddenly,
a-la-ka-zam,
Sister Mary Benedict
had a measuring rod in her hand
and she brought it across his face
with such force and pace
that he stood there, momentarily,
startled beyond belief,
like a comic book character
with a big question mark
above his head
in a bubble.
I mean he didn’t know whether
to sit,
or fetch,
or heel,
or stay
and finally did the smart thing
and ran the hell away,
losing his street creds
along the way,
by the way.

Needless to say
this woman was one scary Homosapien
who obviously didn’t have a career counselor in high school
because she totally chose the wrong profession.

But, in spite of that,
she, perhaps, as much or more than anybody,
helped define who I turned out to be
as a human being,
considering that I walked home,
after my first day
of so-called formal education,
knowing that I would become
a teacher someday,
based on the lack of fun I had that day,
and throughout all my schooling,
from elementary
through earning a master’s degree,
I would think, every time some lesson
didn’t appeal to me,
what I would have done differently.

And, from an encounter
I had with the good sister
in her secondary role as the music teacher
at the school,
I decided how I would live my life,
that I would be among the people
who speak up
against wrongs,
stemming from a song,
“I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,”
that she had us singing
over and over again
for days and weeks.
One day I completely
had had it with Jeannie and her fleece
and suddenly freaked
and screamed
“Why can’t we sing songs like
‘Caldonia’ or ‘Your Feets Too Big,’
songs we know and dig!” –
and then the auditorium was filled
with the sound of a thunderous
“WHACK!”
that froze me in my tracks
and straightened my sacroiliac
and made me wonder if I would ever get that set of knuckles back.

But what I remember most about that
is that
although Sister Mary Benedict never let us sing
the Louis Jordan and Fats Waller songs
I had proposed,
we didn’t have to sing the Jeannie song ever again.

Been standing up to the evils of the world
ever since,
fully aware that it sometimes
brings pain and tears.

And that makes me proud that I am:
Still Me, After All These Years.