part 1

She haunted the students of her fifth grade classroom. We all lived in fear of our teacher on the days when her nicotine patches could not satiate her cravings. Even worse, were the Mondays and Wednesdays, when her diet coke and Slimfast shakes still made her stomach growl over the quiet of her classroom. Her inner frustrations with herself and her obvious weight issues seemed to fuel her anger with the innocent students that sat before her.
Ironically, the more she sought for control in her life, the more she lost her temper behind the closed doors of our classroom prison. She would take pleasure in marching down every tight-fitted row pinching the shoulders of the tiny soldiers beneath her, whom had strayed their gaze from their tedious cursive worksheets. Mrs. Denny clutched her standard 12-inch ruler by her side on her many marches down the isles, as if she held a gun in her belt locked, loaded, and ready to be fired at any perpetrators who dare disrupt her orders.
I will never forget Sevy, the boy who sat behind me everyday in the assigned seating chart. His oversized glasses buried his face, which often blushed when Mrs. Denny found time to embarrass him. Sevy suffered from a rare illness, where he had uncontrollable gag reflex issues that sometimes were so sever to the point of throw up. I had never met anyone with a sickness like Sevy’s and will never forget the regurgitating sounds that echoed in my ears. Mrs. Denny shared no pity or understanding and would grab Sevy by the sleeve removing him outside till his gag spells ended. Looking back, I think she was more repulsed by the idea of not being able to control the situation.
Two of my friends and I knew how upset Sevy would be to the point that hopscotch and dodgeball couldn’t heal his sad little heart from the constant infliction of embarrassment and harassment he received day after day during class. We would find him isolated in the sand box pretending to keep himself occupied to hold back the tears behind the large frames of his outsized lenses. We couldnt take it anymore, we had to act.
From that day forth the sandbox was no longer a playground, but a magically transformed super secret fort. With the sand serving as our blueprints to Sevy’s freedom, we devised an escape route beneath the very jungle gym of our school. Yonder the black asphalt lay what seemed to be an acre of grass and swing-sets stretching to a barrier of ivied fence separating us from the rest of the world. Mrs. Denny did not know it at the time, but her own assigned reading of the Secret Garden fueled our imaginations to infiltrate the inaccessible and get Sevy to the other side of that fence.

From that day forth the sandbox was no longer a playground, but a magically transformed super secret fort. With the sand serving as our blueprints to Sevy’s freedom, we devised an escape route beneath the very jungle gym of our school. Yonder the black asphalt lay what seemed to be an acre of grass and swing-sets stretching to a barrier of ivied fence separating us from the rest of the world. Mrs. Denny did not know it at the time, but her own assigned reading of the Secret Garden fueled our imaginations to infiltrate the inaccessible and get Sevy to the other side of that fence.
end of part 1