When I was in fourth grade, I had Mr. Karp as a teacher. He was tall, dark and handsome. He’d ask questions from the chalkboard and then call on someone to answer. If you got the answer wrong, he’d grab a little bean bag square covered in chalk dust and chuck it at you as fast as he could. You’d have to move fast to dodge it. At some point, I twisted my ankle on the playground and since I didn’t have any crutches, he carried me around from classroom to playground to lunch and back again. Those were the most fantastic three days of my childhood. My father finally ruined it when he said to my mother, “Let the kid walk on her own already.” So my mother called Mr. Karp and I was never held in his gorgeous arms again. Anyway, he used to make this thumb print art. All these cute little characters. And we’d make our own during class sometimes during art. At the end of the school year I had him sign my yearbook. He was left-handed and I used to love to watch him write, the way he would crook his wrist in order not to smear his words. I couldn’t see what he was writing in my yearbook so I went back to my desk as fast as I could, sat down, opened the book to his page and read: Here’s hoping you don’t grow up to be as crazy as your mother.
