3-A 1st Grade “Music” Lessons. Song: “Mack the Knife”. Photo: On a Walk to Elementary School.
It has been difficult for me to come to terms with what my mother described to me was my “rocky road” and “house of hard knocks”. These types of experiences may be more commonplace than I think, but were so overwhelming to me, that it took forever for me to be able to come to terms with them, after having repressed them for such a long long time.
Though music has been the most positive force in my life, an early experience involving music was extremely negative. It took place in my elementary school (photos below). I was brought up to think that my school would be a place where I would be safe, but that turned out not to be true. I was able to get away from the perpetrator and run to the office, but the woman in the office (administrative assistant?) and, believe it or not, even the policeman who arrived, most likely, to lock the school lobby doors, both, made matters worse, by mis-handling the incident. These, and other adults who were involved, were all in positions of authority and, up until that time, I trusted and respected these types of people.
(Photos above, shows my kindergarten at the close end, and progressing, you can see the outside windows, where the two 1st grade classes were held, followed by the two 2nd, two 3rd, and two 4th grade classes. The new three story wing for the upper grades hadn’t been built at the time I took the photo above right. At the far end, the lobby would be extended in an “L” shape to the right, with stairs leading down to the ground floor, and up to the third floor of the new addition’s classrooms. After attending my 5th grade in the new addition, our family, thankfully, moved.
During my 1st grade, my teacher decided for me that I would start having “private” drum lessons on certain days of her choice. My lessons were held in a long narrow room toward the back side of the stage, which was hidden behind the typical school thick, red, velvet curtain. There were long folding tables stacked on their sides against the wall inside that little room, so there was barely enough space to set up one snare drum. In fact, I think that there was only one snare drum in the entire school. My “drum” teacher taught me notes, and time signature in the first lessons always held prior to the end of the school day, and they were supposed to end when the last bell would ring. However, my “teacher” would “allow” me to do drum rolls loudly, only when I remained with him until after the last bell rang. I had NO IDEA why he was acting so secretive, and weird like with me, nor why I always had to wait until after everyone had left the school to go home, to play drum rolls in a closed room behind the stage in the auditorium. Perhaps he, or they(?) working in camaraderie, didn’t want anyone knowing what the real intentions were.
Because there wasn’t enough space in this little room, I was required to stand between the teacher’s legs in front of the drum most of the time, and/or practically on, or close to, and sometimes pressed against the teacher’s lap, no matter what he was speaking about or teaching me. During one of our “lessons”, all of the lights went out (I assume it was because they either went off automatically when we stayed in there way past the last bell, or because someone had turned them off), and when that happened, my “teacher” hugged me with the side of his face pressed against the side of my face, and squeezed me into his body tightly while making believe that he was scared of the suddenly darkened room, even though there was still plenty of natural light coming in through the long skinny window looking out, and down over some nearby marshland, and woodsy like acreage. I already disliked when my father made me sit in his lap too, especially because his face always had scratchy whiskers after he would get home from working. I guess that when the lights went out in this room, this teacher believed that he could use that as an opportunity to be even more inappropriate with me. I was already very uncomfortable with his shenanigans, especially since I was in a room and in a position where I felt trapped. With each lesson, I became more and more uncomfortable with how this drum teacher was acting, but what could I do?
His unusual behavior went beyond anything that I could imagine or control during what would end up being our last lesson! My thought was that I wanted this lesson to be over, and to get out of that little room, to get away from him. I only got as far as the stage curtain. That was where he tried to make me think that what he was doing was perfectly acceptable, and encouragingly convinced me to go along with what he told me I’d really like… I didn’t like it! It made me terrified, and I tried to get away again, but then he became frantic, and tried to grab at me to stop me. I barely escaped, by ducking quickly in the dark, and disappearing in the stage curtains. I rolled under the curtains, jumped off the stage, and ran out through the auditorium doors straight across the lobby, and into the school office. There was still a lady in the office (someone else who worked for the school) who seemed to be the only other person left in the whole school. It was completely obvious to her what had happened to me, but as she cleaned up my face with tissues, she totally downplayed my tearful sobs, explaining that I should stop crying because I wasn’t hurt. Then, she ushered me through the door to the principal’s office, sat me on the chair just inside, shut the door, and left. I sat there alone, with no lights on, wondering what was going to happen to me next.
A few minutes later, I saw, through the crack in the window curtains, that a police car had arrived and parked just outside of the school’s main entrance doors. The “office-lady” came back in, took me by the shirt collar, and out of the principal’s office. She walked me clear across the lobby, and sat me in a chair connected to two other chairs
just inside the rear of the lobby windows where, if I looked through behind me, and over, I could see the back parking lot. All the carpool cars were long gone. She sternly told me (as if I had done something wrong and was in trouble): “Stay right there, and don’t you move a muscle.”
The “office-lady” walked across the lobby, and greeted the officer just outside of the lobby doors. I couldn’t hear them, but could see that her head was moving briskly, as if she was doing all the talking. Then she stiffly walked away, and disappeared. Now that she had passed me on to the policeman, she was probably relieved that it wouldn’t be her problem anymore.
I had always thought that I could trust the police, and thought that I’d be safer because he was there, but it is really surprising that, when the officer walked over to me, he didn’t ask me a thing, at all, about what had happened. Instead, we talked about his belt gadgets and gun, and when he showed me his handcuffs, which I was pretty impressed with, I let him click them on my wrists. I remember when he finished the last click, which went easily all the way down to the last (and tightest) setting, he flicked both of his hands in the air in front of my face. Then, he too, ordered me to stay there and not to move, just like the office lady told me. He walked clear across the lobby, and opened the front door looking around where he had parked. There was no one anywhere to be seen. In just that short amount of time, my wrists started throbbing, and were hurting me enough to make me really scared, and I started crying, again. Then, when I looked outside, and I saw that all of the carpools were long gone, and no one else had remained anywhere inside or outside at the school, I saw my brother peeking in through the lobby windows!
Luckily, on that particular day, my brother actually followed our mother’s rule which, coincidently, had just started to be more strictly enforced for that very day, or he never would have stayed outside waiting to walk home with me! When our eyes met through the lobby windows, my eyes were full of tears, while my brother’s were wide-eyed in amazement, and concern.