Miss Caroline's First Day

Miss Caroline’s First Day

It was the first day of school for many in Maycomb, including myself. I had just moved from a college in Winston Country. Almost 30 years have past since that day in Maycomb when I first saw the school I was to be teaching at. The classroom smelt stale after being closed up for the whole summer, as I met my students who I would teach for the next year. The one child I remember most had a trail of dirty footprints leading to his desk. The little horror looked like he was straight from the pig pen.

After a hectic morning, the children were coming inside from the playground. The filthy child I noticed in the morning, walked past. He smelled of farmyard animals. I can still recall his stench now some 30 years on. I was fascinated by the filthiness of his hands which were the colour of the earth, which had so distracted me that I didn’t even notice a massive insect which ambushed me from his head of grimy hair.

“It’s alive!” I exclaimed with horror.

The children rushed to my attention, one child shut the door so we could swiftly execute the creature. The children fired a million questions at me about the creature’s whereabouts, but all I could do it unsteadily point at the unclean boy with grimy hair.

“You mean him ma’am? Yes, he’s alive,” only something a child could say. I told him about the insect and how it crawled out of the boy’s hair. The boy seamed to find it amusing that I was scared of the creature they called a cootie. He assured me that there