Instructions For Teachers - Walk Across Texas: Fill & Download for Free

I have two stories, both from the same school. The last one is longer, but both of these event still scar me. I may be seen as a cry baby because it isn’t anything as terrible as the other stories I read on here, but they still affected me and indeed “broke my heart.In second grade we were studying the states and capitals. I was asked, “what is the capital of Tennessee”. I answered “Austin”. Now it’s perfectly understandable for a second grader to mix up Tennessee and Texas. But the teacher burst out laughing. Every student (except one girl) started laughing at me. I was really embarrassed. This day follows me, when I’m in class and need to answer a question, I second guess my self. For fear that I’ll mistake the capital of Tennessee for Texas and the entire class will laugh. And the teacher would mock me for this answer for the rest of the year.In fifth grade my teacher was terrible to me. I broke my back in the fifth grade and it was really hard on me. I had a lot of problems with depression and self harm and got increasingly worse after my break, and the incident I’m going to describe. I was at the tail end of my recovery and I was able to walk. We had a dance class that everyone hated. Before I broke my back (I couldn’t participate bc of my injury) I made it my goal to make at least one person enjoy themselves during this class. I saw that my friend was really struggling, so I did the splits for her to make her feel happy. She laughed, by then I heard my teacher scream my name from across the room. Everything went silent… she grabbed my wrist and yelled at me in front of the entire class. I had tried my best to block out this memory but I remember this one word specifically “disappointment”. I had/have a huge fear of not meeting someone’s expectations or standards of me. I start havin a panic attack. I start digging my nails into my leg, drawing blood, and apologized profusely. She grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the nurse’s office. Her grip was so tight. I remember in that instance I felt my first impulse to kill myself. They locked me in the nurses room. I took the razor that I hid in my back brace and started cutting myself terribly. While I was locked in the nurses room my friends told me what terrible thing the teacher told them about me. She yelled at them for 10 minutes about me, how I was a bad kid who can’t follow instructions and will never amount to anything because I can’t follow basic instructions, along with other things that should NEVER be shared about me, without my consent. It was a terrible experience. The nurse called my parents, made them pick me up. My mom yelled at me when she picked me up, for taking her away from work, and later for self harming. That night I tried to kill myself, and the memories of this day spiral me into bouts of self hatred and anxious fits of proving her wrong.

When I was 10 I was talking on the home phone in my mom’s bedroom while standing on her bed looking out the window. Somehow while my hands were on the curtains I managed to pull the rod off the wall. I was scared for my mom to come home because you never knew what you would get with her. Apparently it was a bad work day for her because when she came home, I took her into her room to report my crime —a total nervous wreck —and she clenched her hands by her side and said “YOU LITTLE SLUT.” I don’t remember anything after that.Another time, I was 11. I was curling my hair with the Christmas gift I had recently received —hot rollers— on a Saturday night while she was on a date. She came home a bit early —11:00 while I was playing with my hair —delighted that my stick straight hair could hold a curl. It may or may not be important to the story that my mom was a hairdresser and owned salons many times throughout my life. She took one look at me and said “You will never see the day you are as pretty as me.” I can assume the date did not go well.When I was about 8 or 9 my mom asked my brother and me (11 months apart in age) if we would forgo any Christmas presents, to buy a car for our older sister who was leaving an abusive marriage and taking her 3 kids and moving back to Ohio where we lived. Of course we agreed. It wasn’t for many years that I heard why my sister did not take the offer. My mother had made the offer alright, but the “arrangement” was that my mother expected my sister to have a REAL fresh start, by giving her 3 children up for adoption. They were 5, 3 and 1 yrs old at the time.When I was 12, in the hospital with complications to a broken ankle that had become infected, my adult sister came to see me. As an aside, the ankle was infected because after surgery I was sent home with instructions to clean it several times a day and keep the covering dry and clean. I was 12 and played outside every day. My mother left the care of the surgery site completely up to me and never checked it. One day I told her it smelled. She called my father and he took me to the doctor —where the doctor said I would need to be admitted immediately to the hospital in order to save my foot. It was badly infected. So I was in the hospital —the same hospital my father was coming to daily for radiation treatment for the brain tumor he was dying from.My sister decided it was time I knew about my mother. She told me how the 4 older kids had been left with perfect strangers throughout their lives —for instance my mother met a couple in a laundromat and got this couple to agree to take her 4 kids while she went to another state for a job. She said she would send money. This happened throughout their years growing up. Sometimes the kids were together with strangers, sometimes the 2 boys were in a different home than the 2 girls. The girls were both sexually abused by the men in the home —older kids, adults, relatives —whatever. They have stories of hiding under clothes in the laundry room, etc, from these men. The boys often had to fight to keep the girls safe. When our mother didn’t send money the kids were not fed. There are many details I could tell you, but you get the gist. This explained why I was not allowed to be around my older siblings growing up— I wasn’t supposed to hear their stories. Of course when I went to my dad’s on Sundays she couldn’t control that because all the kids went to Dad’s house on Sunday.So it was no surprise to find out that my mother’s mother —my grandmother—had a family I had never heard of. It turns out my grandmother was married, had 2 kids, and one day her husband went out for cigarettes and never came back. She put her 2 kids up for adoption and started over. She met and married my grandfather and had 3 kids, including my mother—who, as my mother reports —hated my mother. The only thing I know about my mother’s mom is that she was very shallow and very interested in her looks, would not let anyone see her without her makeup —well into her 70’s.Once I grew up and got away from my mother and she could no longer control me, she moved to Texas where my older sister lived. While her mobile home was being purchased to be placed across the street from my sister’s house, she spent the first few weeks living with my sister. Apparently she thought because my sister tried to be a peacemaker and never confronted her on her behaviors —my mother decided she would redecorate my sister’s home. After all, she would be living across the street and may have to be in my sister’s home from time to time —so she should find it acceptable. From day one she was throwing away pictures on the walls, mementos from her kids, blankets she didn’t like, dishes she saw no need for —on and on. Then she went into town to pick paint colors! My sister spent her time pulling her own belongings out of the trash and running interference with her husband.Cut to a year later, my sister is diagnosed with Leukemia. My mother had stopped speaking to my sister because she wanted her to leave her husband of 30+ years and move in with her! When my sister refused she would no longer speak to her. When my sister was diagnosed I went twice to Texas to see my sister. My mother would look out the window at us, she would stand on the porch and pretend not to look at us, etc. So I know she wasn’t speaking to her —for 2 years. Finally my sister went to the hospital for a bone marrow transplant —3 hrs away from home. My mother never said goodbye, good luck, nothing. My sister died 4 months later after 2 failed bone marrow transplants. My older brother drove from Ohio to my mother's home, explained my sister wasn’t going to make it, and asked her to go to the hospital to see her. She refused. I spent 6 weeks in the hospital with my sister and I know she expected my mother to one day walk through the door. It never happened.I believe my mother was mentally ill. I know she was narcissistic and a manipulator.**** Update****I sincerely appreciate the kind responses. Most people I know picked up on exactly what several of you mentioned —that I turned out ok despite my upbringing. I am the youngest of 6, the only one with a college degree. I’ve been a teacher for 20 yrs. The best thing I could ever do was the opposite of what she would do. My relationship with her has unfortunately shaped many aspects of my life. It took some counseling to get rid of the “mother tapes” that played in my head. But some still linger —fear of people for instance. From the age of 16 on—she told me I was going to be raped in a parking lot when I would go anywhere after dark. The bad part of this is that it goes against my nature —I am very much a people person! Go figure. I grew up in a home that I never heard the “L” word or received a hug. And so I hug my students as they enter the class and as they leave. I also tell them I love them all the time! I never had kids of my own and gave up on relationships many years ago. It was never modeled for me so…I was talking to my older brother about this and I realized that one of the most shocking things she did I never mentioned. My brother was a blue baby when he was born. My mother never brought him home from the hospital. So a Pentecostal preacher and his wife took him home —where he remained for 3 years! We only got him back because the family wanted to adopt him, and so they called my mother. She went and got him. His life would have been so much better had he been allowed to stay with that family. He is currently on hospice, having lived his entire life as a homeless person —traveling the country in a van. He survived on disability because he could not work with others —not sure what the actual diagnosis was, but he was considered dangerous at one point. Now he has 20% heart function and won’t be around much longer. It’s funny when the siblings speak about her —we all refer to her as YOUR mother.***Update Funny how things work. My brother I mentioned who spent his earliest years in the arms of a nurturing stranger passed away today. I just returned from the nursing home where he was on hospice. He was only 65. Luckily the last few months he lived normally —established friendships, loved people, made people laugh, stuck up for people and was fiercely supportive of me. I value the time we had together. He was aware of this post and all of the comments and was very interested. He enjoyed the comments about our dreadful mother! He told me to keep an eye on it and let him know what else was said. So sad —his life was simply ruined by our mother. At least he is free now.

Bob was weird, first, in the sense of never knowing anyone like him before or since and, second, in his will-o’-the-wisp way of simply showing up as an ethereal spirit at different junctures of my life. In fact, I never really had a planned meeting with Bob.Where he first showed up was in the gym of my high school in the late fall of ’65, small town Texas. Let me set the stage. Few people moved to Texas from out-of-state in the sixties, and none to small town Texas. In elementary school in Dallas, we shunned the kid who joined our class briefly from Ohio. He told us about digging snow tunnels in his front yard. What kind of rubes did he take us for? We’d seen snow. It’s never more than an inch deep.Best I remember, the event in the bleachers was some kind of talent show. A dozen folding chairs were arranged facing the bleachers. I remember nothing except that a kid I didn’t know stood up from one of those chairs and recited a poem he’d composed about milk, in the context of world hunger.“Who’s that?” I asked whoever was sitting next to me.“Bob, the new kid… from California.”“California…” It resonated. Thanks to the Beach Boys and some other new sounds, California had climbed onto our radars. The moment registered as I had seen someone from California in the flesh. That, and I thought his poem was crappy. But… he’d had the guts to stand up and deliver it in an impassioned way.The next spring, he was in the last semester of his senior year, a year ahead of me. We had a class together, physics. At one point, the teacher sent DeeDee next door to the lab to get an apparatus for a demo. DeeDee was easily among the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life, and this day she looked amazing in her black felt skirt with a pink poodle on the front and a cream short-sleeved jumper—light years out of my league.A bit later, realizing DeeDee was not back, the teacher absent-mindedly motioned to Bob, who happened to be in row 1, seat 1, and said, “Go see what’s holding DeeDee up.” Bob walked past the door that led to the supply room to the front chalkboard, where he drug his palm over the board while shooting a sly smile to the knot of senior boys seated in the front corner.“Something’s up…” I thought.Minutes later, the teacher quit throwing formulas on the chalkboard, snapped to and wondered aloud to all of us what was going on with getting the equipment for our experiment. Just then, through the door comes DeeDee holding the apparatus and followed by Bob. She turned to hand the equipment to the teacher… and there… squarely on her left butt cheek… was one perfect, unsmudged chalk right-hand print.The class erupted in laughter. Bob had taken his seat and was doing his best choirboy impression. DeeDee swiftly took her seat, and that was the end of it …except that I had a new hero.As we near the end of the school year, Bob asks me out to the parking lot to see his new jeep, well, old jeep… doesn’t even have a top… but new to him. He asks me point blank if I want to go to California with him for the summer the day after school is out… just sneak off.I didn’t even know Bob knew who I was much less think I’d be cool enough to invite along. Somehow my parents got an anonymous call and found my bag of gear in my closet set aside for when Bob showed up after dark. When Bob showed up, I asked him if he could give me a day or two to work it out with my parents. He wasn’t inclined to.I get to college a year later, and mid-fall go to the theater across the street from campus, and who do I run into but Bob. I hadn’t seen him for a year and a half, and, turns out, he’s managing the place. He hires me on the spot to be an usher. He then wants to know if I’ve smoked pot yet.“No.”“Okay, after the show, go through that door, come up the stairs and knock on the office door.” Once there, it is the coolest office evah! with its own viewing window, volume control and couch for watching the movie. But not our destination. After he closed up for the night, we went through a door to the upstairs warehouse for the next building. It was a shambles, full of theatrical props from the 40s. The windows still had blackout curtains dating to World War Two. Bob led me to a room behind the main area.The theater owner let Bob live there, despite there being no electricity to the upstairs, rent-free. Bob lit a candle and fired up a joint, my first. He instructed me to lay back on his bed, a sturdy thing he’d built himself, while he went to a corner chair and picked up his guitar. It had been, he explained, custom-made for him from rosewood in Spain. He had paid $800 (factoring inflation, more than $6000 now). He started playing.To my astonishment, Bob was quite good, and in the classical style of Andrés Segovia. Next thing I know, each note is introducing itself to my brain separately, and I am becoming intensely aware of the texture of the wool army blanket beneath my bare arms.Some night!I’m looking forward to finally getting to know Bob better, but only a couple of weeks later, he informs me he’s bored and is heading out for parts unknown. He’s put in a good word for me, and I should become the new manager.I did. I did not see Bob again until the next fall when I ran into him in a little out-of-the-way place on campus. He told me he’d got work on a freight ship, gone to Vietnam, ended up in Alaska, where he jumped ship, thus getting in trouble with the union and not being able to ship out again. He’d just made his way back from Alaska hitchhiking.I pumped him for details on how to get a job on a ship. After that fall semester was over, I stuck my thumb out headed for New Orleans. The union flew me to San Francisco and put me on the first of seven ships I’d work over the next three years.The last time I saw, Bob, was oddly, in that same out-of-the-way spot on campus. He weighed maybe 110 pounds, just emaciated. He was wearing only badly frayed blue jeans with a knotted rope for a belt. The leash to his dog, also emaciated, was another piece of rope.Turns out he and his dog had spent six months living in a cave in the Texas Hill Country with a couple of good books and just eating what they could forage. He had no Idea what he was going to do next. I never saw Bob again. I’ve never even been able to get a lead on him again. He resides in my mind as a weird guardian angel who guided me from an overly awkward teen existence to a young manhood I’m very proud of.