Mrs. Mosher

Yesterday's rain is gone and the sun is shining brightly today. We're in the midst of a couple of busy weeks – nothing major, but a lot of errands to run and appointments to keep. It'll be a few days before we get back to whatever “normal” is. The good news is that the closing on our house will happen in less than a week, several days earlier than anticipated. It will be nice to finish that up and have all the utilities turned off, insurance canceled, etc.

After getting that good news this morning, we decided to go out for lunch to celebrate. That may have also had something to do with our getting home too late for me to make the casserole I'd planned for lunch. It doesn't matter how it happened, we both enjoyed some fried catfish strips for lunch. And I have a beautiful piece of coconut cream pie waiting in the fridge whenever I feel hungry again.

There has been quite a bit of reminiscing about school teachers on the Facebook group page from my hometown lately. I was amused by one person posting a memory about our former high school principal getting a new pair of shoes that squeaked and never wearing them again.

She was quite memorable as a principal. Her office had a window overlooking the back of the study hall. She was frequently in that window on the days the entire high school was in their seats during a free period. She wasn't above tapping on that window and shaking her head and her index finger at anyone who wasn't behaving and was under the radar of whoever was monitoring study hall.

She liked to keep an eye on everything and tried to keep a low profile while doing it. So she always wore rubber-soled shoes. She had a very quick walk and always tried to be very “stealth” when she walked the halls between rooms. Her downfall was the old creaky floorboards! No matter how hard she tried to sneak up on us when she thought someone might be misbehaving, we could always hear her coming.

During my freshman year, we had one of those unfortunate teachers for math who is simply unable to keep order in the classroom. We had one of “those” students in our class, and the principal was always trying to catch him perpetuating his orneriness on that poor hapless teacher. Even when he was caught, his behavior didn't change.

Another of the principal's domains was the lunchroom. Seventh through twelfth grades ate together, and she was always at the door. Not only was she keeping order, but she was sending us through grade by grade. Each day of the week a different class got to go through the line first (and we all knew how we were to fill up the tables once we got our meals). Monday the seniors went first; Tuesday the juniors went first and the seniors went to the back of the line. And so it went throughout the week, finishing up with the junior high going first on Friday. We were supposed to be kept strictly separate by grade, and most of the time the principal's plan worked well.

During my junior year, though, there was a time she was given a run for her money by some of us who were a bit crafty. One of my classmates was best friends with a senior. Both she and her best friend were dating senior boys. That worked out okay (except for the obvious Tuesday, when the seniors were last in line) until I also started dating a senior boy. It took some quick, evasive maneuvering to make it so all three couples got to sit together at lunch and not get caught. It involved being close together in line and then switching places in line just as we entered the kitchen from the lunchroom, when we were out of her line of sight.

She retired two years after I graduated, and I'm sure the school wasn't the same. We were always so used to her caveats, like “now or a little sooner”, her rubber-soled shoes, and the practice of always having a hanky tucked under her wrist watch. She seemed so old then – it's a shock now to “do the math” and realize that my generation is closing in on the age she was at retirement........we're not old at all!