Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: BURIED (04/01/21)
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TITLE: Forgiveness Deferred | Previous Challenge Entry
By June Anderson
04/06/21 -
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She didn’t intend to be mean. She just had high expectations of others, I guess, maybe higher than humanly attainable at times. I always loved my teachers…even after things happened that shouldn’t have. Being a very naïve and trusting child, I believed that in a dilemma, adults were always right and children were always wrong.
At eleven years of age, some of my friends were beginning to “fill out,” as the old folks used to say. I, however, retained my little-girl figure and could have easily passed for a nine-year-old. Of course, I was beginning to be extremely self-conscious. Boys were noticing them, not me. Truth be told, when not at school, I was probably still playing with my Barbie dolls.
Remember when you were in school and would become so involved in completing an assignment that you would lose sense of your surroundings? One day that happened to me. I was sitting at my desk completely absorbed with my work when I happened to look up and notice a boy staring at me, or rather my dress.
It was a cute little spring dress. I remember it fairly well. I guess I’ll never forget it. It was tall and thin, like me. Think the shift dress of the 1960s. Turquoise and green with dots and ruffles. It was a thick cotton and buttoned up the front. Because it was thick enough to wear without a slip, that’s what I did. Keep in mind that my mother wouldn’t let me go to school without approval of my appearance. She wasn’t a prude, but let’s just say that years later in high school, my miniskirts were much less “mini” than most of the ones the other girls were wearing.
When I realized that the dress only intrigued him because the space between the buttons had gapped open, I was mortified! There was nothing there to see, but I didn’t want him to actually SEE that there was nothing there to see! I immediately straightened up and continued my work. Of course, in a little while, I was slumping over my work again, and the scene repeated. Mortified again!
The class soon went to lunch and instead of returning to the classroom when we were finished, the teacher instructed the girls to go to the gym and the boys to return to the room. We girls were all quite bewildered. Nothing like this had ever happened before. We wondered what in the world was going to occur. When we were settled on the bleachers, the teacher began a tirade, the likes of which I can’t remember except for her visual demonstration. She leaned over, pulled my buttons apart, and showed the girls what a disgrace I was. Her comment, eyes flashing, was, “Just LOOK there!”
I was completely stunned and yes, mortified, again. Of course, by now I was crying but somehow had the forethought to stop by the water fountain and shoot the water into my eyes so that I could tell the boys the tears were just water, in case they asked. They didn’t. I have no idea how the rest of the girls took it or whether they told their parents. No one ever mentioned it to me.
This is probably the only time in my life that I have experienced that oddity of repression of a traumatic event. By the time I got on the bus to go home, my subconscious had buried the awful events of the day so far down that I had forgotten the whole thing.
You know, I was grown and married before I ever remembered it, and I have no idea what brought the memory back, but I was at my mother’s and related the story to her. She was stunned. “Why didn’t you tell me?!” The answer is easy: I had forgotten it before I ever got home that day. Somehow God allowed me to forget it so that I would still love that teacher, I guess.
I have forgiven her. That’s Bible. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” It took a long time to forgive her because I didn’t become a Christian until I was about thirty years old, but I did forgive her.
Thank You, God. It was only because of Your grace.
This is a true story.
Scripture is from the New American Standard Bible.
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