The first time that I remember.

My best friend and I are changing after gym class on our first day of eleventh grade:

"Were we supposed to memorize the first ten or twenty-five elements for science?"

"Um, ten, I think."

"Are you sure?"

"Not positive. But meh."

"We're just near the room anyway, I'll stop and ask and meet you at your locker."

"Okay, just don't take too long, my mom'll be waiting."

I finish changing, pick up my backpack, and hurriedly walk back to classroom 217*. Before I arrive the final bell has rung and any students who had been in were gone. I knock and pull the door open.

It is only the second time I had ever seen him--he isn't much for leaving his classroom. It is the first time, now, that I remember seeing him, although I know that I was in his science class earlier in the day. He was seated on the wheely-chair that just fits between the long black table at the front of the room and the wall with the blackboard.

"Um, hi," I smile. I used to be a big smiler. "I was just wondering--on the homework, were we supposed to memorize the first ten or twenty-five elements?"

He beckons me further into the room "No, right? No Comment?" He asks.

I nod. The door closes behind me as I take a tentative step into the bright classroom.

"I had your sister last year, didn't I? Older Comment?"

"Yeah," I say, looking away--down at the floor. Older Comment had failed his class "She, um, she always said good things about you."

I am taken back to my first day of middle school, when I had almost the exact conversation with my science teacher for that year "Older, she's a nice girl. Though my subject was not her strong suit, I imagine. Good girl though, not much of a student." He shook his head and I walked in silence beside him down the sloping hallway. For some reason these conversations always bother me, I feel the need to point out that my sister and I are very different people, but I never do.

"She seems like a good girl, Older, although I don't think she liked me much." He confides.

"Oh, no!" I cry, not wanting him to be offended for a moment, "It wasn't you at all. She said you taught too quickly sometimes, I think, but she always said that you, yourself, I mean, not your science, were very pleasant."

"Did she manage to pass in summer school?"

"She did. But it's okay, she always goes to summer school. She learns better in summer school--the block periods are good, and she only has to remember the things that she learns for about 6 weeks."

He nods. "You were in advanced science last year. Why are you in my class this year?"

I roll my eyes. "I don't think Mrs. X-and-such is a very good teacher. I know it was only her first year out of college but..." I sigh, "We just didn't mesh."

"Didn't mesh?" He says, his eyebrows raising and a quizzical tone to his voice.

I shake my head, "It doesn't matter. I'm here because she put me here--she doesn't think that I'm advanced."

"Only the first ten," he says, startling me with his abrupt answer to the question I had almost forgotten.

"Ten? That's so easy though. Ah well, BFF was right. I should go, she's waiting." I take a step to the door.

My hand is on the door knob as he says, "I think Mrs. X-and-such is wrong about you. You have the makings of a good student."

I smile, blush, look away. "Thanks," I mumble. I shove the door open.

"Coming to see me today," he adds, "shows the makings of a great student."

I wave over my shoulder and hurry away to meet my friend.


*Not the actual room number

No Comment

When I was in high school, something awful happened to me involving one of my teachers.

Years later after much debate between lawyers, I was given some money and told that, should this ever come up, my official stance was to be that I had no comment.

I got away from the town that this all happened in, which in hindsight probably wasn't the best idea, but I was still terrified that the man who had caused all of this was lurking around every corner. I probably took this to the extreme, but I am now 4,000 miles away and less afraid of bumping into him in the street and I realized that I do have comments. Lots of them.

So here they are: