Miss Flag

Brookwater Elementary School is a one-story brick building nestled between Brook Street and Water Street, hence, Brookwater. The flat-roofed, sprawling structure was built into a hill, with the two hallways of classrooms connected by a bridge. All the classrooms have a full wall of windows that let the sun in and our imaginations out.

We didn’t have state-of-the-art playground equipment in the mid-sixties. Set at the back of the field by the upper grades were swings and a tall metal slide. The mid-day sun beat down on the long, smooth metal chute and heated it to dangerous levels, rendering it unusable.

The lower grades were at the bottom of the hill. The play area for these classrooms was the pavement leading from the parking lot to the classroom doors. Scattered about the surface of the black asphalt were a few hopscotch and four-square games painted in school-bus yellow. That was all the younger kids had to work with, but ingenuity and imagination ran rampant and we could turn anything into playground equipment.

For example, take the American flag. The flag stood high at the edge of the blacktop. The flagpole rose from the center of a square, cement base, about three feet by three feet. The sides of this base rose to half of a normal step. This impromptu playground equipment kept many girls happy and occupied while waiting for school to start, or during our twice-daily recesses.

I have fond memories of my sister and me, pigtails switching to and fro, hopping up on this half-step base in all sorts of patterns. Our dresses were short and we were modest. It looked as if we were doing a version of Irish Step dance; hopping with all our might, arms straight at our sides holding down our dresses. The bell would ring and we would go back to the classrooms and collapse into our creaky wooden chairs, worn out yet at the same time invigorated.

Three steep cement steps led up to the classroom doors. Round, bright green, metal pipes were secured into each side of these steps. The idea was to keep children safe, but those railings were too tempting. The students boycotted the stairs. Instead, they would swing on the side railings like monkeys, spiraling up them to get into the classroom and sliding down them to leave. The trick was to do it without the teachers seeing you. 

One teacher in particular, my second-grade teacher Miss Flag, seemed to know where everyone was and what they were doing. Her name fit perfectly. As the American flag gets our attention and respect, the same was true about Miss Flag. She was a symbol of all that is fair and right. One look at her and you knew you were in the presence of a force. Tall and thin, she stood rigid, pole-like, and set in her ways.

Her wardrobe seemed to be two short-sleeve dresses that she would alternate from one day to the next. Except for the color, they looked identical, cut out of the same nub-covered silk material. One dress was the same bright red as the stripes in the flag. But the red did not end there. Her shoes, flats so she wouldn’t tower over her students, and lipstick were the same vivid red as her dress. To round out this attire she carried a red clutch purse which she trapped under her upper arm, her elbow bent at an exact right angle. Always a right angle.

The next day her outfit would look the same, except the color scheme was bright pink: bright pink lipstick, dress, purse and shoes. And so it went from one day to the next. Red, pink, red, pink, with her short black hair in shocking contrast to the brightness of her outfit and her milk-white complexion. 

She had a unique way of making her point, aside from the sharp, non-verbal message of her appearance. She had a rhyme for every situation. Rather than raising her voice, she would speak in a firm, monotone and bark out her sayings. One morning I got called out as she growled, “Get off that railing or I’ll send you sailing!”

That did it for me! No more railing. It was the stairs from that day forward. The voice of authority had spoken and I heard it loud and clear. I continue to hear it after all these years. Why?

It wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it. Miss Flag said the same thing all the other teachers were saying, except she said it in a way that got our attention. She found a way we could remember and somehow made discipline fun. We knew she wasn’t going to pitch us off the stairs, yet we respected her authority over us.

She was setting boundaries without us realizing. Her rhymes may have been entertaining for us, but it was her way of keeping us kids safe. Stay in line and all was fine. Step out of line and you got a rhyme. 

Miss Flag skillfully defined her relationship with us. She was the flagpole; solid, unyielding, and firmly holding an ever-moving flag - us kids! In a way that I understand now, we felt a deep sense of security when we were with her. How I wish I could thank my Miss Flag.