Staying After School

On this past Friday afternoon I visited Mrs. Virginia Gilbert, a.k.a Miss Plimell. Miss Plimell was my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher. That was 1958 to 1960, a long long time ago. I was in the 2nd grade and Miss Plimell was in her second year of teaching. She was in her mid twenties.

I knocked on her door and her husband answered. He was an older gentleman and her second husband. The first one died about seven or eight years ago after something like 47 years of marriage. Dangling from my hand was a holiday gift bag containing a jar of raspberry preserves. I told him that it was a gift for Virginia. He asked me if I wanted to give it to her personally, and I said I would love to, if it were no trouble. He led me to a back room in the house that had a television. There she was, sitting in a recliner; my long ago teacher, Miss Plimell.

She is no longer 25, of course, nor was she in amazing health, but we chatted for a couple of hours. She is still pretty sharp for a person near 80. She remembered not only me, but many of her old students, who were my first classmates. I filled her in on what some of us were doing, and who had died. She had a few stories of her own concerning some of those students. She talked about her life and some of what had transpired through all the years. I was glad to listen, after all, she was one of my first teachers, and the only teacher I had for two years.

Anyway, she seemed glad to see me, believe it or not, and she asked me to return. I promised her I would. I will keep that promise.