Part 2 of Fifth Grade

     Here is part 2 of fifth grade. Mrs. Hrycik was a real stickler about penmanship. For those of you of the computer age – penmanship is handwriting – and my handwriting has always been known as less than stellar. My report cards before fifth grade sometimes had an added note that my handwriting could be neater. I did try, and I wanted to make teachers happy – but this was one area where I did not succeed.

      Mrs. Hrycik's thing was that she wanted the ending to each handwritten word to have an upward curve. In fact, she was obsessed with it! Mrs. Hrycik nagged us about it – if only she could get us to end our words with a swirl as easily as she forced us to memorize our times tables, life for her would have been wonderful.

      After a while, I would write my sentences, and then I would go back over them again adding the upward stroke to the last letter of every word just to make her happy.

      But no, that apparently did not make her happy at all! One day Mrs. Hrycik walked up and down the aisles of the class while we were writing essays. I know I was adding curves to my word endings during that particular exercise, and I thought I was careful not to do my swirly curves while the teacher was watching. However, Mrs. Hrycik saw someone doing it! She gave a lecture to the whole class: penmanship was not about adding strokes after we were done with the word, it was about doing the task correctly, naturally, while we were writing. She continued, even more bitterly: the curve at the end was to be instinctive, not arbitrarily added afterward because some teacher told us to do it that way! I don't know why she was so sad – after all, I was just trying to give her what she was asking for!

      Now, my parents were not the kind to stress over grades. They knew we knew what was expected of us. They did not nag me over the fact that I did not get straight A's in grade school – they merely encouraged me to do my best. I am sure that if they felt I was not doing my best, I would have heard about it. So you can imagine my mortification when we got our report cards after the first quarter of fifth grade, and I saw a D in the column next to penmanship! Oh my gosh! What were Mom and Dad going to do to me for bringing home a D? Shame to the family – infamy – I would never be able to hold my head up again. Maybe they would even disown me. Why didn't I put the swirl on the end of my words the way the teacher wanted? Well, she sure showed me! Maybe next quarter Mrs. Hrycik will be mad enough to give me an E in penmanship!?

      I nervously handed the report card to Mom after school, and then she showed it to Dad when he got home from work. To my astonishment, they thought it was the funniest thing ever! A D in handwriting? Well, some people sure made a big deal out of nothing! They told everyone about it, much like I had imagined they would – but it was not with shame, but with laughter! A D in any other subject on the report card would have been serious indeed, but the Folks did not much care about some teacher's obsession with penmanship.

      I was so relieved to be off the hook with that D. And I learned from my parents' example that there are some things we do not have to take too seriously. May we go through life without feeling compelled to add that final flourish to the end of each handwritten word!

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