They Named a School For WHO???

It's a minute after midnight on a Sunday, and I have to get ready for tomorrow, but you'll never believe what happened to me today.

I went cycling in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near where I lived as a boy in the early seventies. I decided to drop by the house where I used to live and see how the neighborhood (actually a suburban housing development) had changed since I last visited there. I got more than I bargained for.

Back in 1972, when I entered the second grade, there was a corn field across the road from my house. Meanwhile, my second-grade teacher was one Mrs. Welch, whom I had actually hoped to be assigned to but who turned out to be a nasty, impatient, unbearable old harridan. You can probably imagine my surprise when, lo and behold, I found the aforementioned corn field to be replaced by a new elementary school, which was constructed in the year 2000. (The school I attended was too far for me to walk to; hence, I took a school bus.) Even more shocking was the school's name - the Maureen M. Welch Elementary School.

What?

Naming a school for Mrs. Welch - who died in 1997 - makes about as much sense to me as naming a school of international relations for John Bolton. This woman made my second grade tenure hell on earth for me, and even though I could be be difficult when I was seven, I don't think that excused the way she treated me. Ugh, she was awful. I'm sorry she's passed on, and I know her family loved her and all that, but that doesn't make her legacy as a teacher any more palatable.

It seems bizarre that a school only a few yards from my old house is named for my least favorite elementary school teacher. It also serves to remind me of why I shouldn't romanticize my unromantic childhood. I mean, I had a childhood in the seventies!