[blueerica]

Apparently I typed up something last night and never sent it. I got a phone call and must have just closed the window.

One of my favorite teachers, Ms. Slaughter, changed my life in the 5th grade. I think it was for the better, but she was about as unconventional as it got in the middle-of-nowhere Michigan. Of course, with a name like Slaughter, she'd heard just about everything. She was different from the other teacher. On the more pop-side of music, she was into Depeche Mode, and she liked bands I'd never even heard of - though they were punk... of sorts. She was cool, with her flaming red, curly hair that was cropped short, but in an avant garde style. My... She wore a lot of black and her eyes were a blue green. Wow, I'm surprised I remembered so much.

She helped me in an early rough time in my life. My grades were slipping, to the point that I might have had to re-take 5th grade if something didn't change. She changed it, worked with my organization, worked with handling school work and talked to me about my homelife, which was awful at that time.

But, one thing I do remember, and I wish I knew how we got onto the topic. I can't remember now if it was the whole class or just a handful of us. Maybe it was even some time when I was talking to her on my own, but I doubt that. We were talking about punishment, death... that sort of thing. We were discussing "what would be the worst way to die?" I know, it sounds strange, but we talked about all kinds of things. They were childish, but it was fun, in a different way. It really got us to think outside of the box, I guess. Oh, and we decided a razor blade slide heading into a lemon-juice filled pool would be the worst.

To my knowledge, no one in my 5th grade class turned out "bad" from the experience. And if anything, I remember we all ended up being pretty good, brainy students. We were put into the class because it was something new the district was trying with a group of us kids - Instead of being in the same class all day like the other students, we had a rotation where it would be art focused, science focused, and "social studies" focused. I remember playing chess, there was even a bracket system. It seemed like we had a lot of free time to explore in that class.

Wow, now that I'm thinking back, she was even better than I thought.