I get such a kick out of this picture; I don’t know why. I can’t recall my own mother backing me up like this when I even metaphorically stuck my tongue out at anyone. Parent-child solidarity was rare when I was a child. Most people my age go on about how they got punished twice for wrong-doing, once by the teacher who discovered them at it, and then again by their parents when they got home at night.
Come to think of it though, my mom wasn’t like those parents either, and actually may have BEEN more like the filly-mare team pictured here. For one thing, she was twice as old as all the other mothers in my Second Grade class. She’d seen some hard things in her life and at age 50 was not about to let anyone push her kid around. For another, as I gradually realized over time, she had a wee bit of a problem with authority and liked nothing better than to challenge it whenever she had a chance.
I say this because two months after my seventh birthday I got kicked out of the much-becalmed convent school my sister and I attended – for talking, of all things. And I don’t mean I got sent to the Sister Superior’s office. I mean I got hauled out of my little nailed-down desk-and chair combo by my scarlet-faced teacher, handed an empty cardboard box and told, “Pack your books! You don’t go here anymore!” Out of all patience, the good sister threw my coat at me and told me to go stand alone at the abandoned edge of that urban schoolyard under the darkling shadow of the elevated train while she had the main office call my mother to come fetch me.
I stood there and stood there. “What will I do now?” I remember fretting through my tears. “I think I’m too little to get a job!” And then I saw my mother bounding up the hill of the school grounds in our goofy old station wagon. She took me home all right, but the next day she brought me back and, on encountering the young nun there by the doorway, hopped from the car and strode right up to her. “See HERE!” she began. “A child who talks in class is a child who is BORED!” and what could this green young nun say, especially since it did really kind of look as though my mother was actually sort of lifting her up by the snow-white bib of her habit?
Anyway, my mother saved me, even though I didn’t faintly deserve saving. Because the truth is, I did talk, endlessly, to the kids in the seats to the front, back and sides of me. I was guilty as charged. I have always suspected that Mom knew that as well as I did, a fact that remained unspoken between us for the rest of our time together on this earth.
The funny thing is, her doing that for me made me more, rather than less inclined, to stay on that straight and narrow ever since.
EXIT ONLY 
I love absolutely everything about this post! My mother would definitely have been behind me, tongue sticking out too.
I loved this Barb! How can I failed to say so right away!
Let’s hear it for tough moms who fight back! And for teachers who channel the energies of their lively chatty bored students into constructive projects. I have fond memories of being asked to help newly-arrived classmates learn English, and of reading and writing book reports on biographies of notable Americans in second and third grade. A far cry from my experience with a first-grade teacher who had me sit “in the corner” for most of the year. My parents were outraged when they discovered that this had been happening, but as I recall, I never told them about it until after the year was over.
I see that vividly, as if I were there. A high five for your mom.
My mother saved me from a “junior high” math class, for the teacher there was a man who insisted girls should never take math. They were not welcome in his class because they could not cope with numbers. Actually, he was the problem. My mother went up to the school and got me out of that class. What a relief! I was truly afraid of that man, for he used to say to the boys: ” There will be a two-blow fight. I will hit you, and you will hit the floor.”
Here, here! Or is that, hear, hear! Either way – I love this memory of your mother so much. It’s made my day.
Thanks tardily for this vote of confidence dearie . Let’s both be sure to get to reunion !
Very nice!
defining moments! what an impression your strong mom left in your the depths of your being.