Long, long ago, in a high school not so far away, I had an incredible taskmaster, Miss Melba Roddy, who taught English and also sponsored the cheerleaders. She also taught what was then called Advanced English and would now be termed Advanced Placement (AP) English. She was a stickler for details, demanding, never satisfied with your output, and dour … very dour … the word ‘acerbic’ comes to mind. We had a few more words for her, but they will not appear here.

She taught my older sister several years prior. That meant I was “Strike Two!”, or “One foot in the open grave, Buster!” When she returned a student’s six-weeks research paper (yeah, every six weeks!), the girls in her class were smiled upon with favor. The boys, well, not so much. And then there was yours truly. 

If she had been a nun in a Catholic school, she would have worn out a dozen or more rulers every year. Her laser glare from the front of the room made Superman look like an amateur. No sunglasses on Earth could deflect the intensity of that heat. As she walked through the room, handing out student papers like death sentences from a jury, she would stop at my desk. The glare intensified as she softly, yet menacingly said, “You could have done better.”

These research papers had to include a title page properly labeled with the title she pre-selected, your name, your class, fingerprints, and a blood sample; a table of contents; the body of the paper; properly footnoted references; and a concise list of all references at the end of the paper. Sometimes I felt there was an invisible dunce cap on my noggin since there were so many National Merit Scholarship Nominees in her class of fifteen. It was difficult for me to stay focused on that class with so many extracurricular activities stretching my daily calendar. I did the only intelligent thing left for me to do – I applied directly to the Arlington School Board for relief.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. I sat down with my father who was then President of the Arlington School Board to plead for clemency or a transfer to another school district. Demonstrating my best Perry Mason tactics, I showed him Exhibit ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ which were previous papers the defendant in absentia had made serious mistakes in grading and scarred my psyche forever. He listened patiently to my case, all the while holding back his infamous laughter. But I noticed that twinkle in his eye as he said those oft-used, sage fatherly words, “Suck it up, son. This is your problem – you deal with it.” Well, I did survive the class and avoided being sent to the same penal colony that housed Henri Charrière and was made famous by the movie Papillon.

I was shocked halfway through freshman English in college when the professor called me to her office. I just knew she had spoken with Ms. Roddy, and they had jointly decided that I should be sent to a workhouse for the poor. Her words still ring in my ears today, “I see no reason for you to return to any of my classes.” I groaned and awaited the ax to fall across my neck. “Your writing far exceeds your classmates, which tells me your high school teachers did an exceptional job preparing you for college classes. You need not return to any classes, and I will give you an ‘A’ for the semester. Congratulations.”

Could I have been wrong about Ms. Roddy?

A few years later when Mary and I were married and living in Lubbock, Mom and Dad came to visit. After dinner one night, he told me a very funny story. It seemed that Ms. Roddy attended a School Board meeting to receive an award. At the meeting’s conclusion, she told Dad that I could write 500 words and never say anything. They both laughed.

Thanks, Ms. Roddy for what you taught me. However, I think I am working now to dispel that last comment.