In my sixth grade class I had a teacher that went by the name of Mrs. Ebert (pictured right).  I can't say she was the best teacher I ever had, nor was she the worse.  What I can say is that the 9 months I spent in her class were some of the saddest of my youth.  There hung a sadness over her room.  I now think back and speculate as to why that sadness hung in that room.  Could it have just be that I projecting my own feelings during that time in my life?  Perhaps this is the case.

That year was a bit traumatic for me.  I started out in one classroom, and ended up being moved to Mrs. Ebert's class.  The difference between the two classes was like black and white.  The class I was in before the move was light and airy.  It was on the second floor of the school, overlooking a quiet tree lined street.  Mrs. Ebert's class was somber, and dark.  Very often she would only turn half the lights, or not turn any of them at all.  The class before the move had walls covered in colorful cutouts, and such.  There was a calendar that fit the theme of that particular month.  Mrs. Ebert's class had no decorations, and the few that were up looked as if they had been up for a long time.  The color was nearly completely washed out of them, to the point that they looked decades old.

I remember the one fun thing that happened during my time in Mrs. Ebert's class was this silly thing one of my classmates would do.  See, if you look at Mrs. Ebert's picture you will see that it looks like she's wearing a wig.  Everyone thought that she wore a wig, the students, other teachers, even the parents.  I remember overhearing many a conversation about Mrs. Ebert's wig.  So the funny thing that would happen was that one of my classmates would put his head in his lap, and yell at the top of his voice, "YOUR WIG!"  Just like that, he would just yell it out super hard.  There was no way that she didn't hear it, everyone heard it.  There was always this pause that would be taken by anyone at the time "YOUR WIG" would be heard.  Mrs. Ebert would often pause at the sound.  But it wasn't just her, it was everyone.  The pronouncement was the white elephant in the room that everyone knew was there, but no one acknowledged.  I laughed every time my classmate would say it, but I couldn't laugh out loud.  No, that couldn't be done.  A laugh would be like saying "I'm the one that said it."  None of us laughed out loud.  But, everyone did laugh below their breath.  You just couldn't help it because my classmate would say it at random times during the day.  It was always a big surprise, and I always laughed.