EDUCATION

Mrs. Nelson Wasn’t Missing

She just served up her Spam on wry

I know for sure Mrs. Nelson was most likely overjoyed when Mrs. Nelson decided to hang up her whiteboard and collect her well-deserved retirement pension.

Unlike the main character in the children’s books, the second Mrs. Nelson in question wasn’t missing. But there were two of us, and one of us had to go.

I’d managed, you see, to get some parents all wrapped up in a correspondence conflict. Even though most of my replies never saw the light of day, they all certainly belonged in a “Spam/Delete All” folder.

This is a story of an elementary communications conundrum.

Or a tale of an experienced teacher who saw herself on the retiring side of the ledger, and took full advantage.

You see, a woman named Brooke R. Nelson came to work in the school district where I taught for decades. A teacher, with my name, down to the exact same middle initial, as my Nana would put it.

This particular confusion began when our district revamped its online platform, and I started receiving panicked electronic communiqués from the parents of young children.

Does anyone know anything about elementary school kids, their folks, or the educators who teach them? If you man the barricades in grades 9–12, you don’t want to get anywhere near those particular Areas of Operation.

For years, my email handle was brnelson. When that other Mrs. Nelson came aboard — in a 4th-grade classroom a few miles from me — more than a few of us were confused.

The newly minted Brooke R. Nelson’s school email was slightly different from mine — brnelson2. But do you think any of the parentals flooding the district’s online portals paid the slightest bit of attention to the nuanced numerical difference?

I started getting a lot — and by that, I mean a buttload — of electronic notes about the damnedest things.

Little Trevor forgot his lunch; should I drop it off at the office or just run it down to the classroom? Tiny Ashley blew a gasket last night trying to conjugate French verbs, so her homework would be late today.

Think Daddy was conjugating Ashley’s verbs right-quick that morning?

What about the Fun Fair scheduled for Saturday, next? Beau’s Pops wanted to run the coffee emporium at the east end of the cafeteria. Did Mrs. Nelson mind if we served caf and decaf? Asher’s au pair would be dropping by at lunch. He loved Italian subs, but only if they were fresh.

Some of these missives made me hungry. Especially since I’d been on the job since 7 a.m. and a decaf nonfat ginger Surprise! latte and a sub from an upscale grocer always sounded mighty fine to me.

Don’t forget the Tinsley Twins — their Grammie and Gomps (assume this was Grand-père?) were visiting, so they were contemplating a three- or four-day weekend. Could Mrs. Nelson please provide all classroom and homework assignments in advance?

Heck, some of the school district administrators — proving that the Peter Principle is alive and well in education — even got in on the act.

Where do you think that annoying email trend known as “Reply All Syndrome” originated? You know, those incredibly annoying folks who don’t know the difference between “reply” and “reply-all” on an email thread — or don’t really care?

Let’s just say I’m convinced that particular bug festers in the offices of those unencumbered with the important work of stuffing young craniums with knowledge.

I received original emails, copies, replies, and — God Bless ’Em — reply-alls addressed to the other Mrs. Nelson from dozens, which seemed like hundreds. And, at first, I responded. Politely. With great dispatch, in an attempt to set the record straight.

“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong Brooke Nelson,” I’d usually begin. I’d explain that I didn’t teach 4th-graders and that my email was not the same as the email of the woman at another school who did.

I even carried on a thread with the other Mrs. Nelson. Nothing, however, kept my email box from overflowing each morning.

And so it began. I, the experienced high school English teacher and wrangler of teenagers heading toward the end of my career, suddenly was mired in the hysteria generated by parents with 10-year-old progeny. Of the helicopter variety. Loud, insistent, hovering caretakers, willing to sweep in at a moment’s notice to “rescue” their offspring from calamitous classroom circumstances.

I wasn’t the Brooke R. Nelson these folks wanted, and I sure wasn’t the Brooke R. Nelson who knew anything about helping Beau and Asher with their uniquely privileged problems.

I pretty much reached the end of my rope after being asked to sort out behavioral issues. Whatever to do if Macklin swipes Cissy’s cool pencil and she responds by crying about it to her mommy?

I had a better question. Where were the little girls with the cojones to retaliate against their tormentors? I know this Mrs. Nelson would have smeared her peanut butter and jelly all over little Macklin’s seat if he came within a pica of my precious pencil.

And one more thing: Who names a child “Macklin,” for crying out loud?

I regularly received an avalanche of short, sometimes long, snippy, sometimes overly solicitous, downright attitudinous notes about pressing issues involving children with such handles as Cissy and Macklin and Constance and Blaine.

And I was confident the Mother of the Tinsley Twins would long remember my suggestion to her after repeated efforts to direct her query to the other Mrs. Nelson. But alas, I was too timid to tell them what I really thought. So instead of ending one skirmish by igniting a full-fledged conflict, I just imagined my snarky replies.

I spent most of the late spring of my last school year in an abyss of email agony. It wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to end my career, at least on the correspondence front.

I desperately wanted to terminate the whole onslaught by doing something other than blocking all of these online illiterates.

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm,” French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette once wrote.

Yes, I thought about going there. Throwing it back to my own youth. There’s a reason my own high school peers crowned me “Class Clown.”

About one little boy’s favorite sweatshirt and the fact that he kept forgetting it at school?

“You know, it’s about time you stopped swaddling him. It might cause him to exhibit anal-retentive tendencies.” What a joy it would have been to send that reply!

And the little girl who disliked bananas? Instead of telling her Mom, she hid them in her desk, leading to all kinds of stinky classroom ambiance.

“I’ll be sending a bag of those friendly yellow fruits home with Cassady at the end of the day,” I wanted to scribble, adopting what I imagined would be the demeanor of the 4th-grade Mrs. Nelson. “And I’ve attached a delightful banana bread recipe for you to try as a family this weekend. Hope you find time between soccer games!”

One of my favorite faux replies originated after I read about “free-range parenting” — you know, the way we Boomers were raised. My Mom’s credo? Send the kids out to play and hope they come home for dinner.

Tiffani’s MeeMaw was sitting for the kids while Mommy and Daddy were on a Caribbean cruise, and wanted to know if I and my colleagues supervised the playground after school.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m all in favor of what’s known as the ‘free-range’ approach,” I replied in my mind. “Just let them run wild!” I could attach an article for her consideration. “And no, we’re not here for supervised playtime after school. We have lives and families, too.”

I actually wrote that gem down and saved it for my final week of work. Knowing that my employers would be cutting off my email account when my contract with the school district ended in a few days, I thought it was an appropriate adieu.

I typed it out, and “giving no Fs,” as my students would say, actually responded to MeeMaw. Never heard from Tiffani’s family again. And I have no idea if I so shocked their socks off that they didn’t dare reply-all, or if the school district canceled their response because I had retired and my email was no more.

Here I am, almost five years removed from my classroom of 20+ years. I only think about the other Brooke R. Nelson on occasion — as an amusing metaphor for my career. If you can’t laugh, then you shouldn’t be there in the first place. I know I could have blocked all the annoying Internet Spam — but what would have been the fun in that?