Most of my classmates hated our third grade English class. The teacher was a fright in her polyester pant suits and unruly bun (you could tell how harried she was by how many strands of hair were escaping from it at any given time) – and the material was dry for our young age. Most of the writing assignments were unrelatable as well, but they still appealed to me more than anything else. Part of me thrilled when we were given a topic and asked to write a paragraph on it; I didn’t realize then how much writing would enrich my world, but I felt the rich reward of working out words and sentences and seeing what worked best.
The lessons I gleaned were less about writing style and more about life – particularly in how to fit in and when to slip into the safety of unnoticeable shadow. Back then, fitting in was a matter of life and death. Having already been shamed for saddle shoes, I couldn’t afford another instance of being too different or other. When the teacher announced that day’s writing topic as ‘Three-Bean Salad’ I froze. I had no idea what three-bean salad was. Never had it, never heard of it, never even knew of its existence until that very moment. The rest of the class groaned, as much for the topic as for the assignment of writing itself, and the teacher herself was acting as if most people found the salad gross. I took that as my cue and proceeded to write the most over-the-top condemnation of three-bean salad I could make up. Such was my passion and detestation for it that the teacher gave me an ‘A’ and remarked how much I must hate it.
Instead of asking what it was, or writing of my honest ignorance (as a more clever classmate so bravely did) I wrote what I needed to write to fit in, to fly under the radar, to go unnoticed and unridiculed. It would be a trick I’d master as the years advanced, as a young gay man in the 90’s was safest when he blended in.
Even in the third grade, I could play any role. At what detriment, I’m still discovering…
PS – A three-bean salad sounds absolutely divine to me right now.
