The Praxis II Miracle

Once upon a time my parents made me go to gifted school every Friday for four years in a row. It gave me terrible childhood anxiety and so every Friday I would wake up and vomit. Sometimes it happened at home, sometimes it happened in the car, sometimes on the bus, sometimes on my sister, and sometimes at the school. Via my throw up, I begged them not to make me go to that awful, terrible, no good, very bad school. Being a smarty pants just really wasn’t cool when you were in elementary school. And I hated being separated from my regular classroom friends who actually ended up being bad influences on me. Really. My 4th grade teacher pulled me out in the hall once to tell me not to be friends with a certain blonde haired girl in the class because she was rotten to the bone … passing notes and such during learning time! Despicable! I cried.

So anyway, at this gifted school, they tied us to chairs and made us memorize the dictionary and fed us smart kid food through tubes that they lodged down our throats while we screamed and pleaded for a mediocre public education. That is not a true story. We actually did really fantastic things like take classes on candle making, astronomy, or the art of ink stamping. We had a day to bring in food shaped like bugs, a day to act injured (I can’t remember the details of that one, but basically everyone at the school came in on crutches with fake broken legs), and a day to wear, eat, drink, and think all things orange! We also spent entire afternoons solving murder mysteries by asking only yes or no questions to the teacher. Wait a second. Gifted school was awesome. I want to go back. And not throw up every time … that typically tends to really ruin things.

This story is going somewhere. Like here: this morning I woke up at 5:30am to check my Praxis II scores. Remember the day I wore yoga pants and purple Nikes to do a lot of things? That was the day I took the test. And I had to wait forever to get my scores. It was a painful few weeks, and I basically knew I failed and was counting pennies to pay for the test (again), as well as the late registration fee to take it at the end of April. And then the Praxis II miracle happened. I got a good, old fashioned, elementary school style A on the test. 94%. Heck yes!

So I woke my mother up to tell her that I wasn’t the failure of a human that I thought I could possibly be (in regards to the Praxis II: English to Speakers of Other Languages). And she said something like: “See. Aren’t you glad I forced you to go to gifted school?” I don’t know if the two have anything to do with one another - especially since I think this is truly a miracle of sorts - but yes, I’ll take it. And a caterpillar cookie please.