A peek at the REAL Thumbster

It's all about the chickens

I remember back in elementary school standing to say the Lord's Prayer before class every morning. Our third grade teacher, Miss Hamlin, stopped our praying after Blegrhed, (who I suspect was a nonChristian), joined our class. Having Blegrhed cover his ears and hum didn't work out, nor was having him stand in the hall till we were finished, so Miss Hamlin had us start singing the national anthem instead, but that didn't work out either. Singing our national anthem caused controversy with some of the kid's separatist parents and the school board so Miss Hamlin then had us doing animal calls. Each morning before class we'd stand and imitate a different Canadian animal's call. I suppose she meant to instill a sense of pride and patriotism in us, but unfortunately none of us knew what a beaver's call sounded like, (I still don't), so we ended up wailing away with various "woofs", "oinks" and "tweets" for five minutes or so. The principle checked in on us one day to see what all the racket was, (it was on a beaver call morning. Those were always the loudest. Who knew beavers were so noisy), and decided our "oinks" and "wubba wubba wubbas" weren't showing our national rodent the respect it deserved so he put an end to our Canadian animal calls. Never one to admit defeat, Miss Hamlin then had us perform some pretty lame exercises while we listed off the names of the provinces and capital cities but that was deemed to be politically incorrect for some reason so she then had us "dance for peace" instead. Our "dance for peace" usually meant we simply wiggled around in place beside our desks to some Leonard Cohen, Anne Murray or Stompin' Tom songs, but this too was later deemed politically incorrect so we then danced in silence and our "dance for peace" was changed to a "dance for the politically oppressed everywhere"...that was just before Miss Hamlin was fired. Mr Loaness replaced her. We didn't like Mr Loaness. He carried a big black strap with him and wouldn't tolerate any "oinking". "wubbas" or dance-like movements of any kind. I later heard Miss Hamlin became a Communist and went to Argentina to raise goats.

Okay, that story obviously couldn't possibly be true. Anyone who ever knew Miss Hamlin knows she never existed. She's purely fictitious...and besides...she was allergic to goats anyways. If I'm going to write fictitious entries I at least want them to be truthful fictitious entries.

I actually had a really wonderful seventh grade teacher. Unfortunately I can't recall my favorite teacher's last name, only her first...Suzanne. Suzanne something. (I'll bet she had a middle name too...Suzanne something something) She really brought me out of my shell and encouraged us and made us feel like we mattered. I imagine it can't be easy spending most of your days with grade sevens...if you don't like kids, but we could tell Suzanne something liked us. She made learning fun and actually encouraged dialogue and different points of view. I wish more kids had teachers and adults like Suzanne something in their lives. Maybe there'd be more beaver calls and dances for peace if there were.




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