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           Mrs. Manbern had straight black hair that was sawed off at ear level and lips that she painted blood red. Although she had taught fourth grade for 20 years, she still looked as if she belonged driving a tractor on the farm of her God-fearing Pennsylvania Dutch parents. Her arms and legs were like tree trunks and she had a triple chin that rested on a mountainous bosom.

           The lucky kids in the other 4^th grade section had Mrs. Jenkins, who gave end-of-the-month parties, but we had to suffer with a teacher who felt singing and dancing were sinful. We shuffled into the fourth-grade classroom in the morning, head bowed, as if we were doing penance for some unknown sins.

            “Come on, quickly children!” she would call from her immaculate desk, virginal and pure except for a ruler and a pen and gradebook where she wrote nasty comments about us that she showed our parents. Mrs. Manbern had a motto that ruled her life. It thundered from the blackboard and from the outside of the classroom door so that all the elementary school students could see it. It was the 11^th commandment, surely delivered from God to her personally, not in stone but in black magic-markered letters all in capitals: “A MINUTE WASTED CAN NEVER BE REGAINED.”

           She ran us through our subjects as if from one chore to the next. Math was as inspiring as cleaning the pig pens. During our long division, she frowned at Nancy White’s whispering to Patty Lewis and rapped the ruler on the desk for quiet. 

           “Eddie Burns! she called in a voice of steel, “come up to the board!”

           She longed to get us up at the blackboard to practice long division, so she could find fault not only in our calculations but in how we wrote or pronounced the numbers or even in our appearance. Maybe our nails were dirty or our hair looked unwashed. That was another of her expressions, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

           “That’s enough now! Sit down!” She checked her watch with the oversized face. “Time for social studies, boys and girls!” 

           The voice continued thundering from on high as her red lips moved up and down. “First, take out your homework!” 

           “Ellen, share with us your answer to question number one.”

           “Um, uh, just a minute, Mrs. Manbern,” Ellen was fumbling with her bag, “let me get it out.”

           “You mean to waste our time while you’re looking for your work? Michael, what about you?”

           Michael was turning pages to find the homework.

             “Deirdre and you?” Deirdre was looking out the window, a serious lapse on her part. Mrs. Manbern pulled out her chair from the desk, and with a little adjustment, hoisted herself up from her seat, ready to pronounce judgment. With her ever-present ruler in her hand, she appeared at Deirdre’s desk and rapped her notebook with the ruler.

           “In all my years,” she roared, “I have never had such a lazy group of daydreamers as you all.” She spit out the word “daydreamers,” the ultimate insult. We stared, fascinated by her bosom; even though she tried to keep it tightly wrapped, it was shaking in anger.

           The punishment? Writing 50 times, “I must pay attention in class.” She ruled us with an iron fist, she crushed and wrung dry any creativity we might have had, the same way she must have squeezed the udders of the cows she was milking.  

****

           Mrs. Manbern had another motto, this one in green, yellow, blue and red magic markers, that proclaimed, “VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE.” But this one was in the back of the room, and you had to turn around to see it.

           It was invoked with reading time, with our class library, to encourage us to choose books in different subject areas. This was so the girls wouldn’t just read Beverly Cleary books or the Little House on the Prairie series, or Nancy Drew mysteries, instead of more “challenging” themes, she felt like Jules Verne adventures. 

           Reading time was strictly controlled. You could see her looking at her watch face to stop us exactly after 20 minutes had passed. “THREE MINUTES LEFT!” she would call in warning. While we read, once in a while she would pick up a book too, but how could she concentrate as she was sitting there listening for any noise? Let us just dare to shuffle our chairs, sniffle or cough, all suspect to her, all an infringement of the silence rule. 

           At the end of 20 minutes, to her “STOP READING NOW!” it was our signal to write down the book title and author, and a one-sentence summary of what we read.  Sometimes we read aloud what we wrote and she listened and usually commented, “Not enough.” We were never asked if we liked or enjoyed what we read. She never read to us, the way other teachers did. Surely she considered that a waste of her time that could never be regained.

           At the end of each month, we could hear the other class moving their chairs around for their party. If Mrs. Manbern heard this, she never let on and no one dared ask her if we could maybe? Just perhaps? Possibly? Have a party one day too.

           The 11^th commandment to never waste a minute was invoked one day in early spring to teach four of us idlers in the class a lesson. Three of my friends and I had finished a math test early. As the rest of the class suffered under long division, we looked at each other, grinned and one by one, in some unspoken agreement, we began to twiddle our thumbs in unison. We twiddled forward and backward; we twiddled sideways then and laughed.

           The reaction was swift. “You four who are laughing!” she warned us, the words spewing out from her blood red lips. She shot us a look full of venom. 

           Still, we twiddled.

           When she collected the tests, she marched to her desk and roared, “All right then, YOU FOUR, AFTER CLASS!” We trembled at those words, “You four,” and even more at the hated words “after class.” As our classmates trooped out into the spring sunshine, they gave us looks of sympathy. Mrs. Manbern stood over us, her red lips set in a wicked line. She was ready to pronounce the punishment for thumb twiddling, the ultimate sign of time wasting. For two hours, at her command, we sat at our desks and twiddled our thumbs. That way, we’d learn a lesson. No half-hearted twiddling would suit her either. 

           “With more force!” she shouted. and so we did. LuAnn was nearly in tears.  Betsy sniffled. Nancy looked down.  I thought about how I would explain to my mother why I was so late getting home.

           For years after, I wondered how Mrs. Manbern justified wasting these precious two hours. Maybe she had an agreement with God to have the hours regained. Or maybe she felt that her reign of terror and fear provided just the variety to spice our lives and keep our young minds straight.  If only she had let ours roam and twiddle, just a little bit.

**** 

           Mrs. Manbern would have stayed forever in my memory as an ogre who hated her job and loathed kids, but she showed a different picture of herself the following year.

           When we learned on the first day of fifth grade that she was our teacher once more, we looked up to heaven and wondered why we were being punished. But we could see a change in the classroom even on the first day. For one thing, the mottos had changed position: “Variety is the spice of life” was now on the front bulletin board and outside the door, while “A minute wasted can never be regained” was in the back. Where was the ruler on her desk? Her gradebook? She herself looked different with a little less fat under her chin. She had let her hair grow a little longer and it wasn’t sawed off; there was a little curl allowed around her face. The strangest thing is that she had kind of learned to smile, in a hesitant way, though, as if her face muscles, too long dormant, had to get used to it.

           “I’m so happy to see you all again, boys and girls.”

           We looked at each other. What happened to her?

           She showed us not only a smile but soon after, also tears, for two months later on November 22nd of that year, she had gone downstairs to the teachers’ office during the day. When she returned and opened the door to our classroom, we could see she was crying. “Class, something terrible has happened. President Kennedy has been shot and killed.” Many of us started crying, too. We were sent home with no comment that the time would never be regained for missing valuable lessons. Instead, she told us to pray for Kennedy’s soul and the soul of the nation. It was a terrible day for the country, but I think we even loved her that day, when her hair softened and her lips turned to a more natural, pinkish color and her eyes were wet with crying. From that day, I was open to learn from her.

           I never found out the reason for her change. My mother thought maybe she had taken a course in child psychology or pedagogy over the summer. I think it was something else external that she had found love in her life. Or maybe it was a matter of her strong will that she was so proud of having, that she was able to submerge that Calvinist mentality. She just told herself that if she was going to be a teacher, she should enjoy it. 

           The other fifth-grade kids, in the meantime, had old Mrs. Alexander, who cracked down on them, always complaining they hadn’t learned anything the year before with all those parties. The kids in that class looked enviously at us who were lucky enough to have Mrs. Manbern and do interesting projects in class. In social studies, she let us express different opinions. After all, there was the motto staring us in the face in the front: “Variety is the spice of life.”  Did we waste minutes that would never be regained? It was not a waste of time, dear Mrs. Manbern realized, to leave time for creativity and joy and show a human side of her. She had finally left that tractor and farmyard behind. I think God came to her and delivered another set of commandments to her that proclaimed, “Have fun, love and be loved.”

About the Author:

Sherri Moshman-Paganos is a writer and former educator based in Athens Greece, where she publishes a monthly travel blog. She has had poetry and prose published in the GW Review, the Remington Review, Body Literary Magazine and others. She is the author of a poetry collection and two memoirs: Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change, and Miss I wish you a bed of roses: Teaching Secondary School English in Greece.