Wait for the Wagon
One of my most vivid memories is when I was six, and Miss Wait, my first-grade teacher, stood at the front of our class in her prim, beige shirtwaist dress and smooth, dark hair and told us to write our names on the lined notebook paper on our desks.
I lit up. I loved to put things on paper. My sketches filled the blank pages of the books I read voraciously. Drawings of girls’ faces surrounded by curly hair, with names above the faces. “Trixie” was one of my favorites. I wanted to be Trixie.
And I’d seen how my father wrote his name, a cross between printing and script, letters that jumped off the page. I’d write my name like Daddy wrote his, I thought, and add some flourishes of my own.
I scrawled my name—Carol Jane Messer—with my no. 2 pencil. I put curlicues on the C. My S’s, to my delight, looked like seahorses. The last letters of each word kicked up at the ends. It was a picture of a name. I waited, as Miss Wait made the rounds, examining and commenting on each one.
I felt her presence. Saw her lean toward my paper. I jumped, startled, as she jabbed her pencil in the air and said, “No No No No!”
I went still.
“No,” she said, her eyes serious, her face tight. “That is not how you form those letters. Now, you practice till you can be neater.”
I withered. Just sat there, limp. In less than a minute, Miss Wait flattened me.
And, of course, I developed my own critical finger that shook in my face, taunting—not good enough, not good enough, not good.
Not good enough keeps me on the couch doing NY Times Connections instead of upstairs writing. It makes me gape in awe at the incredible novel I just finished reading, figuring there’s no reason to write one myself if it can’t be that brilliant. It makes me Google “Do novels help the people who read them?”, hoping I can justify sitting at my computer rather than be out saving the world.
Thank goodness for Miss Campbell, our choral music teacher, who swayed back and forth in her light blue shirtwaist dress as she directed us singing Wait for the Wagon approximately fifty times during the school year. Our voices didn’t exactly zing with perfection, but Miss Campbell didn’t squelch our enthusiasm. “Yes!” she’d holler, as we let our voices rip. “Put it out there!” I remember smiling and feeling something like hope as I belted out, “Wait for the wagon and we’ll all take a ride!”
Miss Campbell isn’t afraid to take on Miss Wait. Miss Campbell tells me to look at the tile on my desk that reads EVEN IF IT’S CRAP, JUST GET IT ON THE PAGE. She reminds me of my awards and publications. She tells me to not give a rip that one of the first rules of writing is “Don’t write about writing.” Just put it out there! she says.
We all had/have Miss Waits in our lives. I’m so grateful for the Miss Campbells who help us get on our creative wagons, even if we sometimes have to wait a bit. The ride is worth it.