The Class From Hell

THE CLASS FROM HELL

By Joan Kydd

Let it be known: I would rather set my hair on fire than have to sew anything ever.

Back in the pre-tech Stone Age when I began the seventh grade, incoming students had to take what were euphemistically called industrial arts classes. For girls, this meant home economics: cooking and sewing. The teachers told us in their annoyingly chirpy voices that sounded like fingers scratching blackboards back when they had blackboards that it was to train us to be happy, efficient homemakers. It was 1960.No one knew what was about to happen around the corner of time.

No one knew that homemaking was about to go out the window with bras, girdles and taking your husband’s last name. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan hadn’t yet sung at the Newport Folk Festival thereby entering the national consciousness. No one knew where Woodstock or Viet Nam was.

I have a vague memory of liking cooking class - although the only thing I remember making was Welsh rarebit - probably because I once made it for my six year old brother for lunch for a week straight while my mother, who taught first grade, was at open school week telling other parents what was wrong with their kids.

I wasn’t supposed to make him Welsh rarebit. He’d never heard of Welsh rarebit and didn’t particularly want to find out what it was or eat it. I was supposed to make him tuna fish sandwiches.The problem was I couldn’t open the tuna fish can with the flimsy metal can opener my mother left on the counter, which was the only one we had in that unenlightened era.

Oddly, when my mother came home, she never questioned why the unopened tuna fish can was still on the counter or why there were little globs of dried American cheese on the stove. I don’t know if my brother reported the lunchtime events to her or if she just didn’t care what had occurred. She would just put the can of tuna and the can opener away and wipe the cheese globs off the stove. But the next day the can of tuna would be back again like a bad penny, with its unworkable can opener next to it. And there I was again – making Welsh rarebit. It was kind of like a week of Groundhog Day.

My brother has never forgiven me for what he still – a hundred years later - calls Welsh Rarebit Week.

It’s just a good thing she didn’t ask me to sew any clothes for him.

Sewing class was sheer torture. We had to make cotton skirts with fake suspenders made out of the same fabric. Mine was prison wall vomit green (in case you need a visual aid).

Through the semester of weekly classes, I was – again and again - made pointedly aware of two deficiencies in my DNA: patience and dexterity, the latter possibly accounting for why I couldn’t open the tuna fish can, but that was minor in relation to it resulting in being terrified of speedy electric machines.

First came The Patience Problem. I had to carefully iron out the fabric, pin the tissue paper pattern to it, and then cut it. I had to iron it several times – each time ironing in as many new creases as I ironed out. The pattern got scrunched and ripped in a few places when I tried to pin it, and – by then being the last one in the class to succeed at all in these menial preliminary tasks, and being sick of ironing and pinning and just wanting to get it all done as I rushed to keep up with everyone else - my cutting bore a strong resemblance to the skid marks of a veering motorcycle on a wet road.

Next came threading the sewing machine. Dexterity Deficiency mated with Patience Problem giving birth to broken threads and a lot of frustration and cursing.

Once this miserable ordeal was over and I had finally managed to thread the machine, the real terror began. I had to actually sew the damn thing. I dreaded pressing my foot to the pedal and guiding the fabric. I had nightmarish visions of my fingers being mutilated – badly punctured, bleeding, and sewn to the fabric - by the dizzying blur of the zooming needle. I would have to be rushed to the hospital with a bloody piece of material dangling from my fingers, needing emergency surgery - maybe ending up with bent, witch-like deformed fingers. The seams and the side zipper blossomed into a haphazard zigzag of fear.

The last part - the by-hand work - hemming, attaching the suspenders, making the side button hole and sewing on the button - were so far below par the teacher said she wondered if I had my eyes closed when I did them.

All told, I created the garment version of Frankenstein.

And finally the ultimate humiliation. Fashion Day for the class. I dubbed it D-day: Disgusting, Disgraceful, Degradation Day. (I couldn’t sew, but I had a very advanced vocabulary and alliteration ability). I had to wear this monstrosity at school as I went from class to class. The hem was glaringly uneven. The suspenders, each one a slightly different length, but both a tad too long, kept falling off my shoulders. The button hole was a little too big, and the button was loose - literally hanging by a thread - and threatening to fall off. And – no surprise here – I hadn’t measured my waist correctly. The waistband was also a bit too big. The upshot was that this shapeless, lopsided mess fell somewhere between my waist and my hips. I was constantly pulling it back up to my waist which, in turn, caused the suspenders to once again fall off my shoulders. The whole event was a vicious circle of Lucille Ball slapstick comedy on a super bad hair day.

When I came home, I balled the hideous thing up, threw it in the garbage, and crossed fashion designer off my list of glamorous future careers.

And for the record: I have never owned, nor will I ever own a sewing machine.But my fear of speedy electric machines followed me – like the ghost of Christmas past –or in this case, the ghost of sewing machines past – transferring itself to electric typewriters, causing a major roadblock in my early adulthood. I wanted to be an editor for children’s books at a publishing company and eventually be able to stay home and write them myself.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter how intelligent, witty, or enthusiastic I was. My B.A. in English Literature meant zero. At all the employment agencies in Manhattan that I frequented, to qualify for an entry level job I had to pass a typing test and type sixty basically error-free words per minute. On a good day I could type about forty-five words a minute with a very impressive number of errors.

Another dream career bit the dust. I became a part-time college writing teacher. In its strange way, this created a bit of perverse poetic justice. Grading their papers, I could now criticize – among other things - my students’ typing errors.

I bless Bill Gates or whoever created Microsoft Word, allowing me the privilege of fearlessly typing as quickly or slowly as I choose, painlessly correcting errors, rewriting, etc. with the flick of a few keys. If it wasn’t for this miraculous invention, I probably would never have written this story.

The End