Prairie Girls

Rylie

It’s Rylie again, and I got into trouble today. There is a big tree right outside the window of my classroom. Since I sit by the window, it is very hard not to look at what is happening in the tree. I got caught daydreaming, and teacher decided I should write an essay for punishment. My friend Bertha suggested I write a story about what I saw out the window. That’s how “Sammy, the Squirrel” stories started.

I have to tell Papa about the bullying going on at my school, and I don’t know what to do about it. Several of the fifth grade boys are picking on a second grader who is the son of the grocery store owner in my neighborhood. They pick on him because he is German. Maybe Papa will have an answer for me.

What Storm?

    By Judy

Like Rylie, I occasionally daydreamed in school when I should have paid attention. I attended a one-room school, and there were times it was all right to daydream. When I was in the younger grades, if my school work was completed, I could pass the time listening to an upper class’s lesson, read, draw pictures, or just daydream.

There was more time to daydream when I was in the upper classes as I felt I already knew everything the younger grades were learning. Today, I know listening to and reviewing the subjects the younger kids studied might have been a good idea. While I daydreamed some, my favorite activity was to read during the younger classes’ lessons.

My reading provided the entire school (possibly there were 12 students in all eight grades that year) a good laugh one rainy afternoon. Our school was built before electricity was available in rural areas, and there were rows of large windows on each side to provide enough light for learning. The school did not have running water either, and the teacher or an older student pumped a bucket of water at the outside cistern for use during the day.

It rained hard and the wind roared one spring day. Raindrops pounded on the window panes and the old roof of the school building. I was lost in Little Women. The other students and the teacher had stopped their activities to watch the storm.  I continued to read. “Judy, will you go pump a bucket of water?” my teacher asked thinking it a funny joke. I still continued to read, unaware it was storming. Three times the teacher asked me to go outside and pump a bucket of water.

After the fourth time, she walked back to my desk, tapped me on the shoulder and repeated her request for me to get a bucket of water from the cistern outdoors. By now all the students were aware I was focused on my book and not concerned about the possibility of a Kansas storm or the teacher’s voice. I jumped when she tapped me on the shoulder, and every student laughed. The teacher laughed, and I even laughed, happy I had provided my fellow schoolmates some fun during the bad storm.

How hurt I would have been, though, if everyone had laughed at me or made fun of me because I was a different color, a different nationality, unable to learn, had a different family structure, or for any of a hundred other different reasons….