I stood on the table before my classmates, who kept mocking as Mrs. George made a show of my rookie mistake.
I was five and had worn my shoes the wrong way, left pair on right foot and right pair on left foot. It was a mistake that would have gone unnoticed except that day coincided with the day my mum’s directives for me to repeat primary 1 would be carried out.
She would have done what any other fairly reasonable teacher would do: tell me to wear my shoes properly. But no, she did something that would scar me for most of my growing years, and I have had to work hard to fight in my adult years.
She said something along the lines of ‘she doesn’t know how to wear her shoes well, and she’s repeating primary 1 because she can’t read and write. That was my first public humiliation, and it became a memory that was imprinted in my psyche.
I grew up feeling like I should never make mistakes, and if I did make mistakes, it meant I wasn’t good enough. Mrs. George’s single action dealt a big blow to my self-esteem, and it’s taken years for me to recover from it.
I regularly share how my mum made me repeat primary 1, which served as a catalyst for my love for reading and writing, but I’ve never shared the second half of that story because I’ve always wanted to smother the flickering light of that memory.
But in May, I read a newsletter by Lisa Gerber. She’d titled it ‘Not Today, Becky.’ I could instantly relate to the story she’d shared, and my mind went back to Mrs. George. The story I read gave me the courage to be able to say, ‘Not today, Mrs. George.’ Despite the amount of effort I’ve put in to working on the damage that was done to my self-esteem over 20 years ago, there are still times when I hear the faint echo of Mrs. George’s action.
It doesn’t show up in mistakes as small as wearing my shoes incorrectly. It shows up when I want to make major decisions. When I want to take action. And there’s that faint reminder of what if I make a mistake or I’m not good enough.
But by reading that newsletter that day in May, I got ammunition to silence Mrs. George forever. All I have to say is, ‘Not today, Mrs. George.’
That’s the power of story. I found the courage to even write this because I read a newsletter that started with a story I could relate to.
You have a story in you that can change something in someone’s life. Why don’t you lead with a story today?