Building Castles

High school in a small town may have been boring for some, but I enjoyed it. My favorite class was English, because we had the most amazing teacher ever, Mrs. Pedersen. She loved what she taught and she loved us. I’m not sure why or when it began to be a thing, but myself and a few friends started eating lunch in her classroom. We would run to the small grocery store a few blocks from the school, during our lunch break, grab a loaf of bread and a few packages of lunch meat. We’d swing by the deli department and take some of the free mustard and Mayo packets before checking out. Then, we would head back to the school and downstairs to Mrs Pedersen’s room to sit and visit, while we munched on thrown together sandwiches.

She never seemed to mind that we were taking away her lunch time and small moment of reprieve from students and teaching. She would sometimes quiz us on our latest quotes and poems we were memorizing for class. One day as we practiced our latest quote from Henry David Thoreau we had a brilliant idea. We should act out the quote to help us remember it!

We began the quote, “If you” we pointed to our teacher “have built,” we pretended to stack rocks up, “castles in the air,” I stood up on a desk pretending to be a tall castle. We continued on, pointing at our beloved teacher again then doing some silly actions for the other words. “Your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.”

We were down to our last line and my best friend knew exactly how to give our show a great finish. I was a twig of a thing, as my aunt once said “turn sideways and stick your tongue out, everyone will think you’re a zipper.” My best friend played all the sports she could, and thus her body was muscular and strong. So, as we finished off the last line of the quote, “Now put the foundations under them,” she sat on the desk I stood atop and bid me climb on her shoulders.

I assumed she would stay seated, so I climbed up and sat on her shoulders, raising my arms up as a castle with great towers. Suddenly, my friend began to stand and I found myself swaying from side to side. I let out a scream and without thinking grabbed her head to help steady myself. My jerky movements made her go off balance and she was stumbling and trying to regain her balance which made me swing from side to side even more. About this time the school bell rang out signifying it was time to get back to class. I was screaming, my best friend was stumbling and yelling at me to just get off, and our teacher was laughing her head off debating if she needed to step in and help.

My friend made it to the chalk board and used it to help steady herself while I sat shaking on her shoulders. “Get off,” she kept telling me, but my panicked mind couldn’t figure out how that was supposed to happen. “Just slide off my back,” she said through tears and laughter.

Try as I might, I could not bring myself to slide my legs back and down. “I can’t do it,” I said giggling but also terrified. We were running out of time to get to our lockers and back to class, but still I sat in fear on her shoulders and now begining to worry she wouldn’t be able to hold me much longer. Finally, she made her way back to a desk and let me stick my feet on something solid. I slide over her head then carefully made my way back to solid ground, shaking with laughter and terror.

As we hurried off so we wouldn’t be late for class, Mrs. Pedersen called out that she certainly would never think of that quote the same now.

It’s been about 23 years since our performance and I can still remember the quote, so I guess our little acting show worked wonders. I am pretty sure that was our only performance as well, which is probably why I don’t recall any other poem or quote.

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If you’d like to hear more about this amazing teacher check out this story.