An Ingrained, Insignificant, Image in my Mind

I recall one time in 5th grade when for a couple of weeks our English teacher could not come to class. In her place, the school had sent an angry looking subject coordinator to keep us preoccupied. That coordinator, moments after introducing himself to us, gave us a test unlike anything our teacher had prepared us for: a one or two page essay on how technology has affected us. Although it may not seem like a lot, back then, to us, it might as well have been the hardest thing ever.

Nevertheless, I started scribbling down the run-on sentences and bland paragraphs so characteristic of primary school students. I remember handing in my paper, walking outside the classroom door, and instantly receiving devine revelation that the word phone is not written with an f, so that while everyone else was talking about how well they had done, I was outright heartbroken: no doubt that teacher was going to give me an awful grade, and what is worse, he was probably going to have a negative impression of me. However, when one week later we recieved our papers back, I was baffled to find out that, in red ink, the teacher had given my paper a 10 out of 10.

What is more is that no one else had gotten a similar grade. The highest other mark was a 9, and six or so students had that same score, yet instead of being overjoyed, I remember quickly stuffing my paper into my bag, and lying to anyone that had asked by pretending like I too had gotten a 9. Soon after, some of those students with high scores turned to the teacher and asked him why no one had gotten a perfect score. I was bracing myself to have to reveal my real score when the teacher shut them down with a cliche: no one is perfect.

Why? This is why I vividly remember that moment. Why did he not tell them that someone did infact get a perfect score? I understand my actions well enough: I was afraid that the other kids might get jealous, give me unwanted attention, or that it might solidify my image as a nerd. But why did the coordinator not answer the student's question? That I do not understand.

I swiftly went back to my bag and double checked that the markings on it definitely did say 10/10. I checked again a third time when I got back home later on that day, but however hard I looked, and however many times I went back to it, the red ink stayed sprawled across the top corner of the page as it was when I had first gotten it. Then, maybe it was a typo?

Maybe the coordinator intended to give me an eight or a nine, but had absentmindedly written a ten. What if he had purposefuly given me a perfect score and just forgotten about it? That would be good, but what if, instead, he had given some of the papers to someone else, say his wife or a colleague, to grade, and that person, having lower standards, had given me a not-up-to-standard perfect score? Another possibility is that he might have misunderstood the question and thought that those students who had approached him were talking about why they had not gotten perfect scores. Since I never asked him about it, I will never know, and my mind will never let me believe that I had earned that score. This is just how my mind works.

I could be reflecting about how painful something was just for my mind to accuse me of simply being soft and pathetic, or I could be thinking about how hurtful and inconsiderate someone is for my mind to offer the suggestion that I, in fact, am the inconsiderate one and that the belligerent person is in the right. This is also a part of why that memory is so ingrained in my mind: I could never be happy that I had gotten a 10 on that paper because my mind will always be there to remind me of the very real possibility that that was just a typo.