It was 1963. That long ago! I was a new first year teacher, still gingerly tiptoeing my way into a job I was enjoying much more than I thought I would. I had been hired by the Livonia Public Schools to teach English and social studies to seventh-graders. My students were terrific. We bonded. I liked the school, the principal, my colleagues.
Once a month, teachers and staff stayed after school for what was called in-service training. We got together in the school library to learn about a new teaching method or talk about common problems or listen to a speaker.
One of the first in-service trainings I attended featured a man who was an expert on dealing with children who had severe emotional problems. He was well known in educational circles for his understanding of these kids’ struggles. He had a clear, understandable way of explaining why they often caused trouble in the classroom. And he had a sense of humor.
He had written several books on the topic, which I had read.
We all looked forward to his talk.
He was introduced to the gathering. He took a commanding stance in the front of the room and talked to some 30-40 teachers for more than an hour.
Nobody paid attention. Nobody could concentrate.
His pants were unzipped. Not just an inch or so. ALL-the-way unzipped.
When he entered the room he greeted us, then took off his suit jacket, carefully draped it over the back of a chair, loosened his tie, made eye contact with many in the group and began talking. We could only concentrate on the obvious embarrassing situation which was, unfortunately, approximately at our eye level.
Nobody said anything. Nobody told him. We let him talk and talk and talk.
He put his hands in the side pockets of his pants while describing an interesting case. He arched his back and stretched, causing some white cotton cloth -- probably his boxer shorts -- to peek out of the opening in the front of his pants. We held our breaths.
He hunched forward and put both hands on the back of a chair. The white cotton retreated. We breathed easier.
What should we – or somebody -- have done?
I didn’t think it was my place to get out of my chair, walk to the front of the room and whisper, “Your fly is open,” or “Shut the barn door” or whatever the code words men had for this situation more than 50 years ago. This should have been done by a man, not a young newbie female teacher.
The second embarrassing situation involved swimming. Not my strong suit.
All my children swam competitively from the time they were preschoolers until they graduated from high school. One of my daughters swam for the University of Michigan.
I can swim. But barely. I can tread water for a long long time. Given enough time, I can manage one length of a pool with terrible form. I’m OK with backstroke. Can't do breaststroke. Can't do butterfly. My freestyle is sloppy and jerky and uneven. I never learned the proper way to breathe.
Our whole family was at a Fourth of July celebration. A variety of swimming races were on the program. One of the race categories was a mother-daughter relay – ages 8 and under.
Hmm. I can do that, I thought. I was sure my youngest daughter wanted to enter the race, so I volunteered to be her partner. She agreed.
She did a nice racing dive into the shallow end with the other 8-and-unders and swam to the deep end, where I was waiting for my portion of the relay with the other mothers.
Apparently every blasted one of those mothers was a former competitive swimmer.
They all showed off their perfect -- efficient – graceful racing dives and kicked and stroked smoothly to the shallow end of the pool.
I belly flopped. Struggled. Came up for air. Dog-paddled to the finish line where we were obviously dead last.
I was mortified.