Magic Purple Memory Dots

No, they're not something you see when you've had special brownies or found fun fungi. They're something that my gifted teacher in elementary school used to put on our fingers in magic marker to help us remember things when we got home.

I saw Mrs. Roberts today. She was my gifted teacher in elementary school. Our class was called Kaleidoscope. I spent half a day two days a week with her for five years of my life. Well, I suppose it was only one day a week in first grade, but you get the point. Anyway, I got a phone call while I was in the parking lot at Pei Wei telling me that Mrs. Roberts and a pack of other docents from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa (Gillies, as they're called) were visiting the museum and she'd asked after me. Now, when most people hear that a former teacher is in town visiting, they think, "That's nice, I need to go say hi." Me? Oh, I went into full-on hyperactivity, back-to-2nd-grade mode. I was that excited, eager to please kid again. I couldn't wait to get back to the History Center and see her.

I saw her, we hugged and chatted, she told me all of the things she's doing since she "graduated." Among other things, she's taking tap dance lessons from the same woman who taught her tap when she was six. In her own words, "You do the math!" Impressive.

We reminisced about magic purple memory dots, dressing up like little Swiss girls (just for you, Molly), being butterflies, the dreaded Connections (who'da thought I would hate logic problems when I analyze everything to death!), and the Voyage of the Mimi. She remembered a poem that I had written in 5th grade about a painting at Gilcrease. Mrs. Roberts let us be creative, let our imaginations run free, but also helped us learn how to harness that imagination and make it productive.

I've had many influential and inspiring teachers, but because I had her class every week for five years of my life, Mrs. Roberts took my impressionable, mushy gray matter and turned it into something that teachers later could actually work with. And she taught me how to stretch it to its limit.



Me in a "little kid ugly" stage--probably the first day of second or third grade. Ready to go find my yellow folder and try to avoid doing as many Connections as possible.