she painted pictures of all that should happen in a home, the good things people should strive to possess. Eight is a good age for this. They are bright-eyed and know so much, but they are still such babies in so many ways. She told how she apologized to her son after falsely accusing him of eating the last cookie. It was eaten by the plumber, who happened to mention it, or she might have forever thought her son was lying and he would have thought she falsely accused him, teaching him a terrible lesson way too young in life. Old-fashioned stories with little morals were great in the classroom. She got tired of all the younger teachers coming through and saying how old-fashioned she was because she still believed in dictionaries and manners. And she didn’t like the shift away from just good old pencils and paper and regular spelling tests. She hated this creative spelling mess. She loved cursive and phonics. For years her favorite thing was the lessons in cursive—taking children from a world of boxy print letters to beautiful script. It was like teaching a language and suddenly notes home and envelopes in their mailboxes didn’t seem so foreign and foreboding. Learning and facing language teaches children to learn and face other things as well, and no, she didn’t learn the computer with only one more year before her retirement. The typewriter and overhead projector were just fine to get her to the finish line of a long and lovely race.
Of course, who writes anymore? She has a whole box of letters from her husband, each a little masterpiece, at least to her it is. She taught her own children the importance of a handwritten note or tried to. And she loved spending time on manners. Those boys busting to be first in line. Slow down! she would say. There’s no fire! But it was like they couldn’t help themselves, like those jumping-bean bodies were on fire and she was constantly needing to remind them to use their indoor voices as opposed to the outdoor voices. She said that all the time and still does. There are people here at Pine Haven who constantly need to be told to use their indoor voices, not to touch or invade the space of their neighbors and to please slow down. Where is the fire? she asks Stanley Stone all the time when he goes tearing down the hall to be first at the cafeteria. Please, just tell me where’s the fire. Of course, poor Stanley is not the best example since his mind is so far gone. But at least he is on foot. It’s those in wheelchairs, like herself, who are so dangerous when they pick up speed. Please use your manners, she often says. Were you raised in a barn?
There was a time when a child who squirmed too much in class was thought to have worms, but now they call it ADD.
“Worms?” little Abby asked one day when Sadie told this, and Toby had to tell the full tale of how childrens’ bottoms had to get checked at night with a flashlight to see if they had the pinworms.
“Not in Boston, they didn’t,” Rachel Silverman said, and that tickled everybody good. Someone Sadie worked with in the schools used to say to children right there before the others, You need to have your bottom checked, and you know that child was likely embarrassed to death. Even an overly confident child would have to find that humiliating. Sadie told the woman that she thought that was a very unkind way to handle the problem. She was the same woman who taught what an improper fraction was by first making the smallest boy in the class, Edward Tyner, sit on her lap, and she would say “proper” and then she’d turn and sit on top of him and say “improper.” The children, of course, thought it was hilarious, yet Edward never did do very well in life and Sadie has always thought this was likely a factor in that. Sadie has always tried to observe a code of ethics and manners.
Mom, her youngest son, Paul, had said years ago, please fart just once so we know you aren’t an alien. They were in the kitchen; he was working on homework and she was frying country-style steak. He was so full of himself and got away with so much because he was the baby. Horace would have been