The picture above is of me and Winston, my unfixed 150-pound Newfoundland (TMI, sorry). It was taken in 1994, the same year in which the story you’re about to read takes place.

This is the first significant writing project I took on after completing my book, Love Songs and Suicide: A Travel Memoir, Romance, and Tragic Musical Comedy. 

The story is important (to me) for that reason alone. I experienced a severe bout with depression that lasted for several months following the completion of my book. This fun little story helped bring me out of it.

New projects (and old hobbies) can have a healing effect on you. I suppose that’s the lesson, if there is one. Story below…

 

Mrs. MacGyver

 

In the early 90s, I went to a new-age hippy school, located right across the street from Michael Jackson’s former NeverLand Ranch. No, I wasn’t molested. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were all effectively optional at my bohemian school. So I elected to spend my days running around like an unleashed lunatic in a sprawling 1950-something asylum while sporting my homemade Batman capes and Ghostbusters shirts and other superhero-themed ensembles and didn’t really learn a damn thing until the third grade, after I moved to Washington.  

My teacher that year, Mrs. MacGyver, was a tough old Black lady (not that that matters). Since I was a new student with no academic records at the school, she had me take a standardized test to assess my reading and mathematical abilities in the fall. My scores were below average, prompting Mrs. MacGyver to place me in John Rogers Elementary’s special-ed program, Chapter One.  

In a chilly and asbestos-laden portable building, every afternoon starting at one o’clock, my classmate Jimico Green and I received an hour of personalized instruction from a nice lady named Mrs. Fulweilier. Jimico Green and I got along well for the most part, although he did occasionally call me a cracker.  

Throughout the fall and into the winter, I discovered I enjoyed reading and wasn’t horrible at math either.  

After conferring with Mrs. Fulweilier and evaluating my progress for herself, Mrs. MacGyver removed me from the special-ed program sometime in January.  

Rachel Straudbeck, who had a crush on me for reasons unknown, took my place in the program. I would have considered “going out” with Rachel, as we called it back in the day, but even then I had standards. I preferred not to date stupid women. That’s horrible and I apologize.  

That spring I remember struggling with long division for a couple weeks. I received dozens of demoralizing red marks on my math assignments, and Mrs. MacGyver ridiculed me in front of my peers on more than one occasion for offering stupid and not-even-close answers in response to her mathematical questions. 

But do you know what that made me do? 

Learn my long division.  

In the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, she had us write poems for our moms and read our first drafts in front of the class. In my poem I described my mother as being “gentle as a fly.” 

Ms. MacGyver interrupted my poetry reading and laughed out loud when she heard that line.  

“Flies are disgusting,” Ms. MacGyver said, still laughing while simultaneously shaking her head. A chorus of cackles and howls emanated through the classroom and into the hallway.  

“Gentle as a feather, maybe?” I proposed sheepishly, once the laughter had subsided.  

“Gentle as a feather is better,” she said.  

And that was my first experience editing my work as a writer, in front of my peers at John Rogers Elementary in Seattle.  

I always thought Mrs. MacGyver was kind of a (word omitted), honestly. And she was kind of a (word omitted). But I learned just about as much during my one year in her class as I did throughout the rest of my time as an elementary school student. When I officially took my standardized test in the spring of 1994, my scores were respectably a little above average.  

Mrs. MacGyver would be unemployable in this “cancel culture” era, which is tragic in my unsolicited and unprofessional-bordering-on-boorish opinion. My academic development would have been impeded dramatically over the course of years if not for her firmness and strategic interventions. The world needs more teachers like Mrs. MacGyver, not less of them.