Benefits of Teaching Memoir: Their stories provide good problem-solving tips

During the current six-week session I’ve given a writing prompt about name changes, and two seasonal prompts as well: “Back to School” and “Rite of Passage.” This essay Audrey Mitchell wrote could have qualified for all three! Hearing it read in class taught us what a gift her mother, Leila Goodwin, had for solving the big problems her youngest daughter brought home from school.

by Audrey Mitchell

I never gave much thought to my name until I was in the third grade and learned how to write cursive. I would copy my cursive letters and write them very neatly on the prepared scripts trying my best to imitate my third-grade teacher, who wrote very beautiful cursive.

That’s Audrey being recorded for a video about our class.

My capital letter “A” was a disaster in my eyes. I could not make the letter “A” in cursive to my satisfaction. I practiced and practiced. The rounded part of my cursive capital “A” was too big, too little, too fat, too thin, too oblong, too square…I could never get it to look right.

It was then and there I decided I wanted to change my name.

I settled on the name “Elizabeth.” How did I pick Elizabeth? Elizabeth Taylor was popular at the time.Queen Elizabeth, or Princess back then…No. I picked the name Elizabeth because I could make a fabulous cursive letter capital “E.” I made a big loop at the top of “E,” continued with a backwards number three and then elegantly connected it with the next letters, all of them flowing on to complete my chosen new name. My letter “z” in Elizabeth, though lower case, wasn’t bad either.

I asked my mother what I needed to do to change my name. She tried to discourage me, but I guess my childhood zeal took over. She said she’d support my efforts. She helped me write a letter to the “powers that be,” whoever they were, and said she would mail the letter to them. She told me that it would take some time. That was OK with me.

She probably was hoping I would forget about it, but in the meantime, I went to school the next day and signed all my papers “Elizabeth Goodwin” using the most beautiful cursive letter “E” that I could make.

And then I got my papers back.

My new name was crossed out in red pencil and my old name was written up above it, also in red pencil. Those red pencil markings really frightened me. I always got good grades, and this was the first time I ever had so many corrections in red pencil.

Going to the teacher was not an option. Back then the only time we had a one-on-one with our teacher was when we got in trouble.

I was devastated, and I wasn’t about to push it any further. Red correction pencil markings on my papers discouraged me from continuing the process of changing my name. And since I did not mention it again, my mother did not bring it up, either.

But I made alternative plans on how to write my old name. I continued using the printed version of the letter “A” and embellished it by making the “A” with an imposing loop starting at the bottom and extent the line leading to the top to an extreme point before I brought my pen down the other side. Then I extended the line up again to the middle and made another loop before crossing the center with a line. Then I brought the line back across the center. At that point, the line went down again on the right side to attach to the next letter. Quite a fancy “A.” It was good enough for me.

If I had been persistent about my name change and not intimidated by the red pencil marks on my school papers, today you might know me as “Elizabeth.”