Every school has one.  You know, that one teacher that has a big hand in the formation of the person you grow up to become.  Teachers definitely had a huge hand in my upbringing because my parents are workaholics, so up until this year, day care to 10th grade, I would get to school at 6:45 to 7:00 in the morning and stayed until 5:30 to 6:00 in the evening.  So it wasn’t unusual for me to really get to know my teachers in Before Care, After Care, and the regular school day.  When I think of teachers who have had a profound effect on the person that I’ve become, I think of Ms. Pinghera.  Ms. Pinghera was a pre-school teacher and was the teacher who ran Morning Care in the Lower School at Ursuline Academy.  I saw her every school day morning for 6 to 7 years, so to say that she was one of my favorite teachers is a bit of an understatement.  I always liked Ms. Pinghera, and I can’t exactly pinpoint the moment that I decided that she was coolest teacher ever, but I do know that she was the coolest teacher ever. 

I have always been a hyperactive child, and unfortunately for Ms. Pinghera my medication normally wouldn’t kick in until around the last fifteen minutes before school started.  Which meant that while I’m always loud, I was even louder unmedicated.  I’m a naturally talkative so I often ranted about how annoying my mother was and I how much I hated school.  From kindergarten straight through sixth grade I attended Morning Care with Ms. Pinghera.  I remember on my first day at Ursuline Academy, after I had met up with Emily, that I took an almost instant liking to Ms. Pinghera.  She made you feel like you could tell her anything, which I did then and have done so on more than one occasion.

Thinking about morning care in the Lower School reminds me that it’s the people who were there witnessing me in the morning who would probably be shocked to hear about how quiet I am through the rest of the day.   A lot of the time I spent in morning care in the past was me, complaining to Ms. Pinghera and anybody who would listen about how bad something that had happened to me recently was, even if it wasn’t exactly all that bad.  One person who I know would agree with me when I say that I would not be quiet and that I was always very loud is Katie Corbino.  Katie Corbino and I used to play stress, the card game, together in fourth grade.  We used to like and keep score of who won a game and who lost a game, so by the end of the year we would know who was better at stress.  Of course we always lost the paper before we could tally up the wins.  Katie and I met up in first grade.  Katie and I were put in the same class, Mrs. Batten’s first grade.  It was on that very first day that Katie and I became Katie C. and Katie V.  Katie V. apparently just stuck better than Katie C.  I remember in fourth grade that if I ever arrived before Katie; I’d basically flip out until she got there.  All the while complaining that I was bored and couldn’t find anything to do, it used to drive Ms. Pinghera crazy.  I would constantly be asked what thing I had done recently that my mom wouldn’t approve of, and usually I would reply something that probably surrounded the internet or a book my mom didn’t want me to read.  Even though I would usually read the book anyway.  It seemed to become a morning ritual; Ms. Pinghera would wait until my mom was out of earshot, then she and a few of the other kids would sit down at the table and watch as I told them exactly what I had done.   That was what my mornings were like until the day that I started going on the computer that had been sitting in the corner for at least a year.  After that I was pretty quiet, and was probably a bit less entertaining and interesting than I had been before.  I realize now that I was probably a bit selfish, not really letting anyone else on. 

What I have just told you hardly even could cut for what really went on during those seven years in morning care.  Morning care is probably where people might have really got a sense about what makes me, well, me.  In those seven years, I went from a little, chubby 5 year old kindergartener, to my very last day in the Lower School as a “slightly below average height,” 12 years old.  When I was at morning care I made memories, noise, said some things I probably shouldn’t have, did some things that my mom wouldn’t exactly approve of, and really got to know two people— sorry, three people; maybe they got to know me.  Well, whatever I think I learned about them may be I didn’t.