Saturday Memory
May 3, 2025

My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Brand, was a stickler for using English correctly. She taught us with a fierce passion, as if speaking English without error was of supreme importance. Of course, most of us kids thought it was something to joke about. I don’t remember any of the jokes, but I remember what Mrs. Brand did when we recited something and made an error. She always carried a yard stick, and when the error offended her ears, she would cry out, “Murdering the King’s English,” and she would crash the yard stick hard on a nearby desk. No matter how often it happened (which was a lot), it was always a shock. To this day, I can hear her and the crashing ruler, and I cannot proofread anything without her voice in my head.