In fourth grade, my class put on the play “Alice In Wonderland” (here’s Jilli and me, playing the owl and the dormouse, respectively). As the dormouse, it was my job to sing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat” (my first and last solo). The elementary school music director was quite possibly the cruellest and most evil woman[1] I have ever come across, which is, of course, why she was working in an elementary school, which gave her ample opportunity to scream at little kids and make them cry. Evil people thrive on that sort of thing.

So we were rehearsing the play, and it was time for me to practice my solo. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat” isn’t exactly “The Magic Flute” in terms of singing difficulty (or in terms of anything else, for that matter), so I’m pretty sure I was decent. But — and here’s where disaster struck — Ms. Satan told me to use “hand motions” to accompany my song. These “hand motions” included waving my fingers while raising my hands in the air as though I were tickling some very tall, invisible being, then bringing my arms around full circle to encompass, I don’t know, a world full of bats and teapots and twinkling things, and there were probably other humiliating arm-dances that I had to perform but I’ve repressed most of it.

So I said “No.” I, a tiny (even by fourth grade standards) girl, said, simply, “No” to a six-foot spawn of Satan.

She was flabbergasted. “What did you say?” she asked.

“No, I don’t want to,” I repeated, slightly more quietly.

Let me tell you, I have seen lots of people get angry (and have frequently been the cause of it), but I have never seen anyone as absolutely furious as this woman became at that moment. And what distinguished her fury was the complete confusion that accompanied it: nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever said no to her, especially not some shrimpy little fourth grader who hadn’t even hit puberty yet. What on earth was I thinking?

I wish I could remember. I seem to have lost all of the chutzpah that I once possessed; nowadays I can’t even correct a moronic driving instructor who doesn’t even have a basic grasp of physics. (”It’s not that they decelerate at different rates — they decelerate at the same rate but the truck has a greater mass so it needs a longer distance to come to a stop.” IMBECILE.) Come to think of it, perhaps this has to do with the fact that, after I said “no” to this woman, she unleashed a barrage of screaming that left me sobbing in front of my entire class, and I eventually did wind up doing those stupid hand gestures.

[1] In fifth grade, for our graduation, the entire grade was supposed to play some awful three-note song on our recorders. One of the girls in my class, Angela, had broken her wrist, leaving her with a cast from mid-forearm to second knuckle. When she told the music director that she couldn’t play the recorder at graduation, the music director replied by angrily yelling “What? You can still move your fingers!!” She then stalked off, muttering, “Kids today, always looking for the easy way out.” I am completely serious.