Monday Notes: Begining/Beginning: The Memory of Emotion
Picture it: seventh-grade science at an academically gifted middle school that was embedded in a high school in 1985. Our science teacher was a stern, Black woman, who was notorious for “preparing students for the future.”
Students feared her.
I remember completing a major assignment that year. I’d worked all night on a task that is long forgotten. On that assignment, I had misspelled the word beginning. I’d left off an ‘n,’ the one right before that second ‘i.’
I received a 99/100.
I remember staring at the paper. I was twelve, and I’d worked very hard on an assignment that was, at the time, very important. By then, my mother had taught me that working hard and doing my best was imperative. It showed integrity. No sloppy white-out marks. No half-assed efforts. But here I was with a 99/100 because I’d misspelled beginning.
People have remarked at how great my memory must be to have written such a detailed memoir full of emotion, so I’d like to share this fun fact about me. I always remember how something made me feel, and because I wasn’t praised for sharing my feelings; oftentimes, I suppressed the emotion. Subsequently, the detailed feelings of many things were buried, stacked, and stored in my memory at the cellular level.
Thus, I don’t remember the specific assignment, but I do remember how it felt to receive 99/100. Even though a 99 is still an “A,” I remember feeling like a failure. I remember the -1 etched in blood-red ink on white notebook paper appearing larger than the 99/100 circled at the top. I remember suspecting that perfectionism was attainable, if only I knew how to spell beginning. I remember suspecting that perfectionism was unattainable because I didn’t know how to spell beginning. I remember the anger that brewed inside. And I remember giving up. Science wasn’t for me. Even though the one-point deduction had nothing to do with science, that’s what I’d determined…in the seventh grade. Not only did I never work hard in that lady’s class again, but I also never worked hard at science.
For some, this may seem like a lot. The rumination. The what ifs. The self-denigration. The resolution. The stored memory of a seemingly insignificant event. However, this is how my brain used to function. This is why I can recall how something felt decades later.
Furthermore, I was not raised with implicit or explicit lessons about feelings, emotions, or how to handle them. No one taught me that feelings weren’t (always) facts, as they say now. I wasn’t taught how to process emotions into a healthier existence, just to overthink them into an abyss of shame associated with my sense of self.
But now, I know better.
If I were to re-parent myself, a common and therapeutic practice, then I would explain the following to twelve-year-old KG: Grades are not the end all be all. Grades have nothing to do with your self-worth. That one-point deduction was related to language arts, not science. You are still good at science. And even though you didn’t know how to spell beginning, it turns out language arts was your thing—cue Alanis Morissette.
My point here is this: if someone asked me if I remember when I knew the sciences weren’t for me, I’d share this story, not because I remember seventh-grade science, but more so because I remember the emotion associated with being one point away from perceived perfection.
And that, my friends, is how I can write about memories with so much emotion.
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