Once Upon a Time| A Short Florida Story

Grandpa with his gun on tour in Vietnam

 

The diamondback rattler coils, ready to spring at the threat of the massive indigo snake. They partake in a staring match, knotting, arching, and flexing; each showing the other who wields the most strength. The diamondback reveals fangs filled with deadly venom and strikes. The indigo, king of snakes, is unfazed, immune to the neurotoxin that paralyzes both man and beast. They wrestle and tangle. In his massive jaws, the indigo clamps onto the rattlesnake over and over, breaking skin and cracking bone. The rattler doesn’t stand a chance.

Like the wonderous indigo snake, my grandpa was a force to be reckoned with. For all his strength, my grandpa had a tender spot in his heart for me. When he turned up the radio to his favorite country music station, he let me step on his rattlesnake-skin cowboy boots, and danced with me to Hank William Jr.’s slow, sad songs.

In third grade, my teacher’s name was Mrs. Roach. Some students might giggle and make fun of such a pesty surname, but our class had too much respect for this teacher to mock her. She gave us M & M’s for completing any assignment. If we finished early, we could go to the game table and play to our heart’s content. Mrs. Roach shared her collection of National Geographic magazines so we could know there was more to life than our little corner of the world. She was the first teacher to recognize that I was a writer.

In the middle of class, Mrs. Roach called for me to stand and read my story. She didn’t ask any other students to do this. I shared my tale about the shimmery eight foot long indigo snake that had slithered through the grass in my backyard. The other students stared in wonder as if they could see the same scene in their minds’ eye.

This was a turning point for me in my education. I thought I was a bad kid and that I was dumb. In the previous year, my second-grade teacher marked up all my copy work assignments and made me feel like I was drowning in a sea of red ink. I was the poor kid in class who wore the same outfit nearly every day. Another girl, the perfect teacher’s pet, always picked to be first in line for lunch, scooted away from me. “Teacher,” she said, “I don’t want to stand next to her.” This not so gracious teacher responded by sending me to the end of the line.

I don’t remember ever talking in Mrs. Roach’s class, which might have been the reason why I was sent to the school psychologist. At the time, I thought the woman was a writing teacher because she kept asking me to write stories. She never told me that she was there to access if I was in an abusive situation.

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