Fifth Grade Part 1

   My fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Hrycik, pronounced “wry sick.” Her husband was also in the school system as an administrator somewhere. Mrs. Hrycik's two biggest emphases were spelling and penmanship.

    Spelling I could breeze through. For some reason, this always came easy to me. We had a spelling test every week with 10 new words. But every week, the word very was on the test. I spelled it correctly each time. After a few weeks Mrs. H said that she was going to continue to have very on the test until every student in the class got it right! I don't know how I managed to get it right the first time if it was so tricky for everyone else.

     There was a classmate who competed with me for the better spelling grade. One day she got a higher score than me and told me how hard she had studied for the spelling test that week! Study for spelling? What a novel concept! That had not occurred to me! I then realized that if I took the time to actually prepare for the quiz I might get perfect scores all the time. Again, a novel concept!

     For math that year we had to learn, and by learn, I mean memorize, our multiplication tables – from 0 times 0 all the way to 12 times 12. while we were memorizing our multiplication tables, we took addition tests – we added single digit numbers, just two numbers to add, ten problems across the page and ten problems down the page – 100 additions to complete in three minutes! Once we had mastered the addition, we started the multiplication problems – 100 of them, again to be completed in 3 minutes. We got to be quite good at them. Sometimes now when I need to multiply, for example, 8 times 7, and the answer does not come as instantaneously as it used to, I hang my head in shame as I imagine Mrs. Hrycik's frown.

     We had two plays that the class put on in the auditorium that year. One was a Halloween play. I was cast as the black cat. My scene was to walk on all fours across the stage to some children sitting at the feet of the parents who were telling a Halloween story. I felt really silly in my black pants and shirt crawling on all fours – there had been no rehearsal for the black cat – I was trusted to do the job right. I was very self-conscious in front of the audience, but for some reason, my cat made them laugh – they loved me! I guess I've been hooked on wanting to get audiences to laugh ever since!

     The second play I have no recollection of at all and only know about it because Mom had saved the program all these years in the envelope with my report card! The play was about Christopher Columbus, and I myself was cast as Mr. Columbus himself! It must have been a small role, maybe even without words – maybe I just stood there as a portrait of him? Because otherwise, I think I would have remembered it.

     The story of Mrs. Hrycik and our adventures with penmanship will have to carry over to another entry as it takes more than a few paragraphs to get through.

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