I remember two things about my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Trosin. She was mean, and she kept an autoharp in the classroom.
How mean? Once she caught my friend Robby spitting in class. Whether it was an accidental chin-dribble or a full-on loogie, I don’t know, but I do know Miss Trosin grabbed Robby by the arm and shook him like a rag doll. If she tried that today, she’d be doing 5 to 10 in Chowchilla.
Miss Trosin was one of those mid-20th-century American schoolteachers technically known as an old battle-ax. She was squat, hard and sourpussed, and she scared me.
Students who disobeyed any of her myriad rules would be sent to the cloakroom as punishment. Miss Trosin nicknamed it the “doghouse,” where the offender would ponder his crimes against the American educational system and repent.
After a few minutes, Miss Trosin would let the boy (it was always a boy) exit the doghouse, then force him to stand before the class and publicly apologize. This final act of contrition proved too much for some kids, who became tongue-tied and panicky to the point of wetting their pants.
But not me.
The one time I was sent to the doghouse (for what reason I can’t recall, but it was probably for talking in class), I stood there composing in my mind the most ornately abject apology Miss Trosin would ever hear. Somehow I intuited that a magnificent mea culpa might inoculate me against future ire.
I can still see myself begging forgiveness, confidently orating like Cicero before the Roman Senate. And I can still see Miss Trosin’s nearly invisible trace of a smile as I sat down to much applause. I had won the day.
This memory came back to me a few weeks ago as I considered the age-old question “Who by fire, who by water?” It fits in with the notion of mora shamayim, loosely translated as the “fear of God.” The Torah brings this up a lot — “You shall fear Adonai your God and serve Him” (Deuteronomy 6:13), or Isaiah’s “Let [Adonai] be your fear.”
I was a fraidy-cat kind of kid, but my m.o. then, and in some ways ever after, was to push through my fear of the Miss Trosins of the world by impressing them. If they liked me, I reasoned, then no harm could come to me.
Of course, mora shamayim gets upended when we are simultaneously commanded to love God. After all, who wants to adulterate love with fear? Even as Reb Nachman declared the world a narrow bridge, he quickly added that the main thing is to not be afraid.
Which brings me to the autoharp.
There was a time when many grade-school classrooms had autoharps. In those days music education was as much a part of the curriculum as “Dick and Jane.” The best thing about an autoharp is that one need not be Paganini to play it. Follow the chart, press the correct chord buttons, strum away, and bada-bing, you’re playing “Frère Jacques.”
My teacher would valiantly play the thing a few times a week during music period. But mean old Miss Trosin also left the autoharp out for anyone to play during lunch or recess, and for that she had no rules. I remember being wildly drawn to it, strumming haphazard tone rows that would have made Arnold Schoenberg wince.
In the process I learned about keys and intervals, about sharps and flats, and about jamming, fourth-grade style. Miss Trosin scared me, but not enough to keep me from playing her autoharp every chance I got.
Leaving it out so temptingly was an act of love, whether Miss Trosin knew it or not. I see that now.
This is a scary world. Bad guys are everywhere. Fear is a rational emotion these days. Sometimes I think the smartest thing I could do is build a reinforced concrete underground cloakroom and call it Doghouse One.
But then I remember that the world is a narrow bridge, meant to be crossed. And somewhere on it, I just might stumble across Miss Trosin’s autoharp.
Dan Pine is senior writer at J. Reach him at [email protected].