(…and the Teacher of Desire)

There is one teacher Max will never forget, but what Miss Murphy taught him wasn't just alphabetical and to this day he still doesn't know if she taught him the right things―it was sex education.

Little Max went to a Catholic school run by nuns and Miss Murphy, who was not a nun, taught Third Grade. She was much younger than Max’s mother and the older kids talked about how she was sexy, but he only thought that with her round happy face, blue eyes and black hair she wasn’t ugly.

The Mother Superior, leader of all the nuns, had been Max’s Second Grade teacher and that year was fuzzy except for the Humphrey-Nixon presidential election and the old Mother Superior herself. Every morning she called names and students marched up to get their homework, but when she called Max’s name she whipped his paper in the air or threw it on the ground. Maybe she didn’t do it every time but he felt like she did. “What is wrong with you?” and “Go stand in the corner!” were her favorite things to yell. Max’s parents didn’t like Nixon but the Mother Superior sure did. Once on the playground she was giving kids candy bars for shouting, “Nixon’s the One!” So Max shouted with the others and she wouldn’t even look at him.

Miss Murphy saw what happened, and she smiled at Max like no one ever did before. Instead of the nun’s bad feelings all through him were wonderful new feelings he couldn’t forget. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” she said, and touched his face.

After telling his Mom about the candy bars for Nixon she stuck a “Humphrey for President” button on Max’s uniform and drove him back to school. The button came off the second he saw the Mother Superior’s angry face. That day she crushed Max’s homework into a ball and threw it at him. He’s still not sure if his treatment that year was political, or she just didn’t like him.

Third Grade was all different. Max had funny feelings about Miss Murphy from the first day. She never seemed to have a sad face and her fine black hair looked so soft. Her blue eyes were always bright and under her blouse were pretty tight straps. She smelled like beautiful flowers and dressed in dark colors with knee-length skirts and shiny stockings that had a straight line in back like his Mom’s. She wore flat leather shoes the same as Jackie Kennedy, but Mrs. Kennedy had skinny legs, Miss Murphy had nice long legs and when she looked at Max she smiled and slipped her shoes on and off sometimes. She also twirled her feet and crossed her legs over and over again, and squeezed them together. Sometimes from his seat Max saw her skirt slipping up her legs, and where her stockings ended would be showing. She didn’t know it, or she didn’t bother to pull it back down right away. Max was disappointed when she finally would. He didn’t know why looking at Miss Murphy’s legs and stockings made him feel so good, but they did. After long periods his little dickie got stiff from sitting though.