Little House on Kent Drive

Getting older isn’t just about menopause, gray hair, saggy skin, and

afternoon naps. There are many positive sides to aging. There is one in particular

that I have worked my whole life getting ready for. That is, retirement. I have

worked the same county job for over 23 years and am getting closer to the day

when I will seldom, if ever, set the alarm clock on my phone again. My husband

and I will finally get the time we so desperately have been looking forward to, and

we will sit back and enjoy each other and the life we have built together.

My job was not my career. My career was my family. My job helped to

support my family. I love my job and I have made a lot of good friends, a good

paycheck, and built a great nest egg for my retirement. But it was far from where I

had imagined I would go. At a young age I had always wanted to become a

teacher.

I grew up in New York, on Long Island, in a small town called Shirley. We

lived in a little house nestled on a quiet street called Kent Drive. My sister and I

shared a room that was small but big enough for our imaginations. We both

wanted to be teachers when we grew up and we were both completely obsessed

with Little House on the Prairie. There is not one episode that we haven’t seen.

So, it was only natural for us to sprinkle imagination dust all over our bedroom,

and poof, just like that, we were in Walnut Grove. The year was 1877, and I was

Laura Ingalls. I had long brown hair that I had always kept parted in the middle

with braids on each side. It was perfect for my character. My sister was the

teacher, Mrs. Beadle. My sister always got to be Mrs. Beadle because she was

older and always got her way, and for fear that she wouldn’t play with me, I didn’t

put up much of a fight. But she did however, promise me that one day, she would

let me be the teacher and that kept me quiet.

We would use record album covers as desks which we put flat on the floor

in rows. They worked perfect because they were big and square and provided a

surface to write on. Our stuffed animals, baby dolls, and barbies were the other

students, and we used our collection of hard cover Nancy Drew books as our

attendance ledgers. The first few pages of the Nancy Drew books are blank. My

sister would write down the names of each of her pupils; Laura, Mary, Albert,

Nelly, Willie; and then draw lines like a graph to calculate attendance and grades.

She took this very seriously. She would stand in the front of the class and call out

the names, taking attendance. My job was to reply here, disguising my voice in

different tones to give the illusion that there were multiple people in the room.

Once in a while, she would call out a name and I would not reply. My sister, Mrs.

Beadle, would look up from her Nancy Drew ledger book, and then around the

room, repeating the name. She would then look down at her book and mark and

say, Absent.

Next, she would begin to hand out work sheets. Real work sheets.

Being that it was the weekend when we would play school, I was not really

wanting to do actual school work. I did actual school work all week at school. But

she said if I didn’t do it, she wouldn’t play with me. So, there I sat, at my Thriller

album desk, and did school work.

There is one particular memory in our Walnut Grove classroom that neither

me or my sister will ever forget. We were in the classroom, and I was at my

Thriller desk doing my school work. My sister, Mrs. Beadle, called me up to her

desk, which was really our dresser. I put my pencil down, rolled my eyes and

approached her.

She looked up from her Nancy Drew ledger book and asked me

why I was interrupting the class by talking to Willie. “But I wasn’t talking Mrs.

Beadle” I replied. I was sitting at my Michael Jackson Thriller desk doing school

work on a Saturday. “You were talking to Willie” she said as she pointed in the

direction of the Hall and Oats desk next to mine.

I was getting confused. I hadn’t said a word. I just stood there and shrugged my shoulders. I went to say something but she stopped me before I could speak and yelled “Go to the corner this instant Laura Ingalls!” and she stood up and pointed to the corner of the room. I was in shock. And, I was getting mad. “No!” I yelled at her.

Then she reminded me that she was the teacher and I had to do what she said. I reminded her that there were no other people in the room, and that Willie Olsen can’t talk because he is a stuffed unicorn. She pointed to my unicorn and said “Yes, you

were Laura Ingalls. You were talking to Willie.” I had enough.

I yelled at her that Willie is not real and I was tired of doing school work on Saturday and I wasn’t playing school anymore. I went to turn to leave the room, but she begged me not

to go. She said she was sorry and I didn’t have to go to the corner. I told her I was

tired of playing school and I wanted to play something else.

After a long pause, my sister looked at me and said “tell you what. If you finish playing school today, tomorrow I will let you be the teacher.” My eyes widened. That sounded amazing. Her and I did a pinky promise and I was excited and anxious for it to be tomorrow.

The next day, we did play school and my sister did keep her promise and I

did get to be Mrs. Beadle, however, my sister was Mary. If you know anything

about Little House on the Prairie then you know that Mary goes blind.

So there my sister was at her Lionel Richie album desk being blind Mary. She had her arms and hands stretched out in front of her, feeling around with her eyes closed. She

couldn’t do any of the school work I set out for her because she couldn’t see it.

She knocked over all of the students, papers and books were going everywhere

and she didn’t listen to a word I said. After all my efforts of trying to get her under

control failed, I stomped my foot and left the room.

Many years later, my sister did in fact, become a teacher. It was her dream

and she made it come true. And I’m so proud of her. Whenever we talk about this

story, we always laugh. It is so fun to go back into our memories and picture that

one room school house we created in our bedroom. She, to this day swears it is

because of her that I learned to read. Looking back at all of the school work that

she forced me to do on those Saturdays; she could be right.

-Desiree