#78, Ms. Donohue.

My 7th grade French teacher. i was new at this school, and late to start, so i had a helluva time. French was the only language class with any space left, otherwise i would have been in Spanish and who knows how my life would have turned out? i certainly wouldn't have been able to enter that shop and ask for a parapluie that time i was walking around the streets of Paris and it suddenly began to rain cats and dogs. (Chats et chiens.)
Where were we? Right, Ms. Donohue- lots of big, horsey teeth and a short crop of dark silver hair. A winning smile and a sweet, pretty face. For some reason i always thought that she didn't have very many friends among the other teachers at my school. My name in class was "Françine", which i absolutely loathed, but there was no translation of "Heather" and all the cool feminine names were already taken. i used to sit at the back of the class and tie rubber bands around my fingertips just to watch them change colors and become cold, bloodless. (Did you know that each finger on your hand turns a different color? It's true.) i remember once winning an art contest in class, and always thought it was because she felt sorry for me. On special days we would watch movies (La Boum!), and once a week or so we'd watch Téléfrançais, when i swear Ms. Donohue would stand in the back and smile and sing along with the opening song. Adorable. i think she worried about me being so strange, and tried to befriend me by talking to me about rock music, although her references were usually a tad old; we once had a halting conversation about Golden Earring's "Radar Love". And when she found out i drank coffee (no idea how that happened, by the way), she became quite concerned and cited a study that linked caffeine consumption in women with higher breast cancer rates. So mothering. i hope she's still there, still teaching, and still caring about the next crop of troubled kids.