Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
Gender Bender
Gender role indocrination was part of the N.Y.C. Board of Ed. curriculum in the years 1943-1945.
They didn’t call it that of course, but if girls are required to take cooking and sewing, and boys are required to take shop, how else can you categorize it? Required, I said, as in you don’t graduate without it.
I was a girl so…first semester of seventh grade we had sewing. To receive a passing grade you had to sew and apron with a pocket. The whole class used the same pattern. You also had to complete a simple matching kerchief (which we called a cap). Both were finished with bias binding.
Nobody, absolutely nobody at P.S. 101, Queens, was exempted from these requirements although we were aware that a few students had received significant help from mothers, grandmothers, etc. I bitched and moaned at having to do this but actually completed the assignment myself.
Where I balked was at having to wear these creations in the cooking classes which occupied the sewing class time slot during the spring semester. I particularly abhored wearing the cap (kerchief). Laugh! Surprise! I usually forgot it and had to get a note from the cooking teacher, Miss Wicks, whom we called Miss Wig behind her back; yes, she wore one.
It was a fairly regular week for me to appear back in Miss McDonald’s English class to get my cap for Miss Wicks cooking class.
This particular Friday, McDonald was in the middle of a spelling test with another seventh grade when I made my appearance. She gestured for me to go to the “cloak room,” as the coat closet was called, and get it.
I felt impelled to make a formal verbal request.
“I’m sorry, Miss McDonald, but I have to get my, my, my, (what was the word) my thing.”
“Get it,” McDonald commanded between clenched teeth, attempting to go on with the spelling test.
“But, Miss McDonald, it’s my, my, my,…thing,” I stammered desperately, unable suddenly to access the word cap (or even kerchief, which would have been more literally accurate).
Round and round we went. The more I struggled to retrieve that word the more elusive it became and the harder I tried.
McDonald wanted only to complete her spelling test and have grades to enter. But her class saw this as a marvelous battle of wills and source of entertainment, not to mention a derailment of the test.
To this day it is hard to believe that, between my temporary amnesia for the word and the class, we actually used up the entire 40-minute period.
