Teacher’s Pet

At that time I had just turned seven and had been successful for about two years in delaying my doomsday. She had given in to my tears and pleas. I never wanted to go to school. I had heard tales of horrors from my brothers who were attending Nelson Street Boys’ RC School and I saw that place as a killing field.

My brother Cleaver literally dragged me all the way from Jackson Place across Piccadilly Street, down Duncan Street, across Tamarind Square and deposited me in the ABC class. Then he said, "Don’t cry, I’ll come back for you" and disappeared among hundreds of blue shirts and khaki pants. I bawled and screamed with all my might.

An angel of mercy came to my rescue in the form of my class teacher Miss Hazelwood who held my hand, embraced me, cuddled me, dried my tears and showered me with kisses. It was wonderful. School was not that bad after all.

I missed home quite a lot. My mother always had something nice like sugar cake or toolums for me to eat. My marbles were hidden in an old tin can underneath the house where a wooden beam met a concreted pillar. I kept wondering if a thief would steal them. My roller — an old bicycle wheel with the spokes removed — was also under the house covered with a piece of cardboard.

In my pre-school days, I would spend most of my time, playing with this roller running up and down Jackson Place. At the first bend in the road, there lived a Barbadian lady called Miss Bradnock. She used to call me into her house and ask me to wind up the gramophone marked His Master’s Voice with a picture of a dog. The record she would put on was "You are my Sunshine". There was a part in the song which goes, "You’ll never know dear, how much I love You. . ." And that’s where she would put me on her lap in the rocking chair and start kissing me so much that I thought she would devour me.

Miss Bradnock would then give me a sweet drink and biscuits and say something like, "Sunshine boy, tell your mother ‘hello’ for me." But my mother never seemed happy when I told her how the lady used to kiss me. Once she muttered, "Why Bradnock doesn’t make her own child to kiss!" Miss Bradnock was as spinster.

At the end of the year — 1938 after surviving the ‘cut-tail’ catechism class, my brother Victor and I, decked out in serge suits and bow ties, made our First Communion and Confirmation. Without my sister Dolly that would have been impossible because I could not read. Miss Hazelwood invited us to her home and treated us like royalty. Of course, she kissed me endlessly.

In Standard One for one year and Standard Three for two terms, I had the same teacher Miss Rose. She to used to play with my hair and kiss me. One day Pete Simon, a former teacher in the school, came into the class and kissed her. When I saw that, I was angry. I stopped speaking to her and would not put up my hand to answer questions.

After school, the next day, she called me and said, "So you’re jealous? When you like some one, others will like her too." My first lesson in this mystery called love. Then she hugged and kissed me and sent me away happily.

By the way, some school children were discussing holidays. One felt that holidays should be four times a year . . . three weeks each time. Another suggested five times a year . . . three times each time. Then one guy said, "We should have holidays twice a year . . . six months each time!"