Tragically for me, during the long, long evening that followed, I was not able to make my sad mood go away. Even drinking with Mr. Ravenbach three bottles of the finest Spätlese Riesling wine had not helped. Well, it helped some.
To make the matters worse, when I arrived at my classroom the next morning, not only was I still sad, but I had a headache the size of Neuschwanstein Castle. Unfortunately, my headache was not as pretty as Neuschwanstein Castle.
Soon, the children flooded in, flushed, excited, red-faced, and bubbling over with childish enthusiasm. As they came into my bright, sunny classroom, I could see their little faces turning into frowns, their childish enthusiasm disappearing as if it had been blown away by a hurricane. With my teaching, I aspire for this. The classroom is a place for the learning, the order, and the discipline, not a place for the childish enthusiasm.
Drusilla was always the first to arrive. She sat at her desk, straightened her little skirt, and laced her fingers together with her back erect, and sat patiently waiting for instructions from her beloved teacher. I do adore a child like Drusilla.
She smiled at me. I smiled at her. She nearly levitated out of her chair, such was her happiness at being smiled upon by her beloved teacher.
“Mrs. Ravenbach?”
“Yes, Drusilla?”
“Is something the matter, Mrs. Ravenbach?”
By now the classroom was nearly full. My students are quite punctual. Fear will do that for a child and the parents of that child.
“Yes, Drusilla. I read something which made me quite sad.”
“Oh. That’s awful.”
“So it is.”
The other children, they asked all kinds of questions about what had made their beloved Mrs. Ravenbach sad. I was not answering the questions. Private business is private business, but it proved impossible to hold my sadness inside where no one could see it.
“Oh, Mrs. Ravenbach,” said Drusilla, “isn’t there anything we could do to make you feel better?”
They all added their high-voiced two cents. “Pleeeeeease.”
“Mrs. Ravenbach, please?!”
“Oh, please.”
“What, what, what, what can we do for you?”
To answer that question, it did not take me long.
I said, “Welllllll . . .”
Instantly they understood my meaning. It was a school for gifted and clever children, after all. Together, they all shouted, “Reward Time!”
One of the happiest times for any child in Mrs. Ravenbach’s fourth grade classroom is the Reward Time. When the child has done exceedingly well, she or he, although I must confess it is most often a she, gets a reward. The Highest Honor. The two highest honors a child can receive in the classroom of Mrs. Ravenbach are the brushing of the hair and the massaging of the feet.
At Reward Time, the children wait in a perfectly straight line, giddy at the anticipation of the possibility of being allowed to brush my hair using my great-great-grandmother’s sterling silver hairbrushes, mirror, and comb made from the finest silver from the Harz Mountains. The Harz Mountains are a beautiful part of Germany, I’m sure you know. The mirror and hairbrushes have the most beautiful handles, made of antlers from a stag shot by Count Otto von St. Paul, the husband of my great-great-grandmother. On one magnificent day, he shot seven stags, and the most beautiful antlers of the most beautiful of all of the seven stags he had shot that day were used for the handles of my hairbrushes and mirror. Think of that, seven animals taken in one day! What a happy man he must have been, outside his hunting lodge with those seven stags piled up like a still-life painting, dead in a heap, bleeding rich, red blood over the gray granite of Baden-Baden.
I think of that happy tableau every time the little children brush my hair with my beautiful sterling silver hairbrushes, which have boar’s hair bristles and are very stiff. The children must work their little arms with great vigor to exert themselves enough to get the bristles through my thick, luxurious blond, blond hair, which, I am quick to point out, I do not dye.