We are all supposed to know about the power of the spoken word, especially
when it gets down to guarding one's tongue. But are we able to weigh, or
even fantasize the weighing in of our written words, and how they can
affect our entire destinies in the course of a lifetime?
Allow me to share with you the story and the history of just one, only one
Word. It goes all the way back to my homework assignments in the 1950s, in
Bethesda, Maryland. It involves the particular destiny of my mother being
away at work on the night shift as a professional nurse. These combined
details on the Stage of Life set up one of my major skills and major loves
in life -- being a writer.
*
I was a tiny, December born, youngest member of my second grade in public
school. My teacher was a typical WASPy (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
professional teacher, serious, graying and also typically, a spinster, who
took her job very seriously.
I was one of about three Jewish kids in a class of 30, and being vain,
ethno-centric and biased, probably the smartest and most motivated kid in
the class. I am not a genius, but at the age of eight I was borrowing my
father's books and reading them. Hence, I also missed out on many
children's classics, but that's beside the point.
Back to age seven and Miss Smith. She taught us all about synonyms,
antonyms and homonyms, and how to look things up in dictionaries and
encyclopedias, which, of course, I loved. She instructed us to buy index
cards and boxes. We were to write a new card for each new word learned,
together with its antonym, synonym and homonym (where applicable) and to
file these alphabetically. Which, of course, I loved.
Very rapidly, my neatly printed cards filled up the `recipe box' so that I
had to graduate to a shoe box. When that got filled up and there was no
more working space on my desk for more, she called it quits and just asked
me to commit the new words to my memory.
I was rapidly learning the power of the written word and had long since
become the Teacher's Pet. She certainly knew I was Jewish but she wasn't an
antisemite. If my two Jewish classmates were dark eyed and dark
complexioned and had obvious Jewish names, while I was blue-eyed, blonde
and fair skinned without an obvious Jewish name -- how did she know I was
Jewish?
September First had started the Second Grade year for me along with Rosh
Hashona and Yom Kippur. October had brought in Succos and Simchas Torah,
for which I had missed public school to go to synagogue with my parents and
siblings. My parents had written the obligatory explanatory absentee note
and sealed it in an envelope. They had also explained to me what was in
that envelope. This taught me to admit my Jewishness and be proud of it in
my own quiet way. As I saw it, those written notes contained a lot of power
as they connected directly to the power of the High Holidays.
Still, that doesn't reveal the one magic word that turned me into a Writer.
We have only finished with the preliminaries.
That one magic word was, and is, and will be: Sioux.
You see, in my boredom, I had looked up `Sue' one night in a real
dictionary, and didn't find it, so my Dad told me about the homonym of
`Sioux' -- which I devoured. I was totally amazed, at age seven, that
something so weirdly spelled and that looked so absolutely impossible to
pronounce was the same as my own `Sue'! Of course, along the way, I had
subliminally picked up the idea that one was supposed to be creative, and
not just a robot or goodie-goodie. So I proceeded to title, ever so neatly,
in print, all of that night's homework as "Sioux Tourkin", thinking my
teacher Miss Smith would be thrilled with my creative brilliance.
The next day I turned in my work and awaited a winning smile on my
teacher's elderly face, with a nice accompanying pat on my petite blonde
head.
Well, well, well.
Miss Smith turned purple and/or red and held her breath. Thank G-d she did
not yell at petite and fragile me, but grabbed a pen and wrote a note in
script. She sealed the envelope very well and in a choking way, quietly and
sternly instructed me to take it home to Mr. and Mrs. Tourkin to read and
sign and absolutely have me deliver it back to her the very next day.
Pronto (my interpretation).
Of course, I fulfilled her instructions and as fate would have it, my Mom
was away on a night shift so my Dad was the Tourkin to read it. He burst
out laughing but quickly hid his face. He tried to be stern and instructed
me never to hand in any work signed as `Sioux' but only Susan or Sue or
even Susie. But never `Sioux.' He indicated that I was supposed to be
`reprimanded' -- a new word for my vocabulary -- and said THAT was the
reprimand. Then he dutifully signed the note for me to return the following
day.
Being that my posterior intuited what corporal reprimand was, and since my
Dad had NOT spanked me but had laughed and flushed, whereas my teacher had
been stormy angry and had also flushed, that was the moment that the
`atomic bomb' went off in my lil' ol' head.
That was the moment that subconsciously, my neshoma connected the
power of those absentee attendance notes to the teacher and the power of
the teacher's disciplinary note to my parents. In short, the power of the
written word.
That was the moment that I became a Writer. That was when I learned that
just one humble word, Sioux, could entertain or anger or have dismay dumped
on me or evoke fatherly affection towards me.
Thank you, Miss Smith, for not yelling at me. Thank you, Miss Smith, for
writing that note.
Thank you, dear Dad, for not yelling at me, for bursting out laughing and
thank you, dear Dad, for pretending to discipline me.
Thank You, Hashem, since at that moment I became a Writer, then and
forevermore.
