Mrs. Shackelford was my first-grade teacher in 1976.

Small and quick, with tidy cotton wrap skirts and eyelet blouses,

she ushered us lovingly, but efficiently, from station to station:

math, phonics, science, geography.

She told us she had two toddlers at home,

and when she was absent (presumably for them),

her mother, Mrs. Willoughby (a retired first grade teacher)

stepped in to man the ship.

She was softer…solid color polyester dresses, round collars,

oversized buttons,

her glasses nearly too large for her face.

Her upper arms amazed us, jiggling as she clapped.

“I had a little brother,” she sang.

“his name was Tiny Tim.”

We joined in, remembering the song

from the time before.

“I put him in the bathtub…”

Oh, we were scandalized!

“To teach him how to swim.”

No, no, no, we thought. Surely not!

“He drank up all the water…

and he ate up all the soap.”

We clapped along, eyes wide.

“Now every time he laughs,

he has a bubble in his throat!”

For the grand finale, Mrs. Willoughby

forced a loud, realistic-sounding

“HICCUP”

which brought us to our knees with laughter.

“Again!” we pleaded. “Again!”

Addition, subtraction, reading circles,

temporarily postponed.

She always

began again.