My second grade teacher Miss Egan had a giant set of beautiful shiny white flashcards, with second grade words and some pictures. I remember them well, because I would often be sent to the back of the class to play with those flash cards when she was helping her more basic readers. (My mom taught me to read very early, so I spent hours of the years between four and seven boastfully reading aloud to my little sister and brother, an uncritical audience, while my mother had naps and phone chats and cocktails.)
Miss Egan’s flashcards gave me my very first shock of learning, suddenly, that something I thought I knew was entirely wrong. From the flashcards I learned that “then” and “than” were really two different words!!!! As a bit of a careless reader, a skimmer really, I had imagined that “then/than” was one word with two different possible meaning (like wind(n) and wind(v)), which writers sometimes carelessly spelled two slightly different ways.
Back to Miss Egan and a darker second grade memory. Our class had a “reading book,” one-inch thick and full of a year’s worth of stories, in the opinion of second-grade planners in 1950-something Manchester, NH. NOBODY was supposed to read ahead of the class in our class reading book. But, regrettably, I could not help reading every story in it, all the way to the end, during the first few months of school, hiding it under my desk and reading by glances whenever Miss Egan was doing something that bored me. I managed to stay undetected until, one fateful day, Miss Egan asked the class if we ever had heard the name “Ebeneezer.” Of course, I shot my hand up in the air, which Miss Egan rightly ignored.
Miss Egan (I realize now) moved though her lesson plan, asking the class, “What kind of name do you think Ebeneezer could be? Who could be somebody or something you’d name Ebeneeze?” My classmates started guessing, a boy, a girl, a dog, etc. etc. Finally everyone was stymied.
Of course, I shot up my hand up then and said, “Ebeneezer could be a big red tractor.” Consternation and uproar! (it was the right answer.) “You have been reading ahead,” said Miss Egan. “That is cheating.” “No, no!,” I defended myself, horrified that my clever answer was earning me scolding rather than praise. “I really just guessed it.”
I hope I have become more honest in subsequent years, but do I ever want to become less cheeky?