Nov 10
9
Teachers: Need Help On Perspective?
Well, I’m only fourteen so I can’t be sure I’m totally correct on the way I’m making this history teacher veiw the world. This is just the way I think a teacher would look at things. So any advice on perspective, even any on the story itself, would be fantastic.
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Where’s the Little Limping Girl?
As a high school teacher, I was used to seeing kids as they passed through the hallways; trudging, running or dancing their way to classes, often making it just before the bell sounded. There were the kids who sagged, the ones who had more piercings than they did hair, the ones who held all their books in one arm and their notebooks in the other. And then there was the Little Limping Girl.
I never found out her name; she was just another student traveling down the glossy laminated path. But even with the hundreds of kids passing through in a small time span, you get an inventory of the notable ones. She was in none of my classes; she only passed through my hall once a day. The only thing truly notable about her was her subtle limp.
Bearing short brown hair, a backpack and a binder, she was nothing near as strange or as unnatural as the guys with the lime green Mohawks. But it was the way her gait differed from those around her that caught my eye day after day.
I often tried to note her expression in comparison to how she moved. Some days I couldn’t get a glimpse, but others I could clearly see a grimace of pain, or maybe a very slight smile and an almost normal walk. One day she was walking with someone, a friend I assume, and the limp was completely gone. Masked. After a few more times of this, I realized that this gait was a secret.
Was she afraid of how people would label her? Kids can be harsh. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine even the most decent of kids softly joking about House, the witty crippled doctor, while she went home and lay in bed, wondering if that’s what they really thought of her. Or perhaps she was almost denying it existed, thinking that if other people didn’t acknowledge it, she didn’t have to either. But for some reason, I always imagined her to be fearful of the weakness it gave her. It may have been because of my own experiences in high schools that I assumed this. But whatever it was, it is what I always thought was the reason for her to keep her disability a secret.
Her mask answered my questioning thoughts on why she wasn’t allowed a cane or crutches at school, but it did not answer the question of why. Why her leg was twisted as it was, why it caused her pain. As a history teacher, I had never been adept at science and did not know much about the human body or mutations it was capable of. Was it just that; a mutation from birth? Or had she been injured, and it healed over in an improper fashion? Perhaps a mix of the two?
I found out after a few months of school that the Little Limping Girl knew one of my students. I was tempted to ask who the girl was, but decided against it after a few days contemplation. I didn’t want to give away the girl’s secret, so how else would I approach? And wouldn’t it be a bit strange that I paid so much attention to a student I’d never even had as a student? It wasn’t much of my business anyway. So I let the Little Limping Girl keep heading her way, day after day, down the hall with no interference from me.
About a month later, the Little Limping Girl has a bruise on her nose. It was a dark purple, and swelled to the base of her nose. I overheard her say that she “got bopped”; but there was hesitation in her voice, even edge. I wondered where the bruise really came from. Not a week later, she had another on her cheek. It was then I began to question whether or not it was best for me to stand in the background, or if I should make an appearance.
It was another week passed, and suddenly the Little Limping Girl seemed to be in pain every day when she passed by. She held her head as if she was having a migraine, and her limp was considerably worse. I hesitated. Should I say something? Ask her if she needed help? But by the time I had made up my mind to say something, she was disappearing among the looming crowds of kids.
The next day she was not there. I figured that after the hard week of trudging down the halls and to other classes, she didn’t feel well enough to come to school. But then the next day she wasn’t there again. What had happened to the Little Limping Girl? Where had she gone?
It was two days later that I found out there had been a bus crash on Douglas Street. Route 10. Three students had been killed, seven injured. I never saw the Little Limping Girl again.
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