An odd thing happened one day at school. This lady with a Dorothy Hamil haircut came to get me from class. I had never seen her before.
She apparently wasn't a stranger because Mrs. Marshall knew her, so I didn't put up a fuss or ask her to tell me the password.
(Due to my sharp fear of one of my siblings being kidnapped, we'd developed a password in case a stranger tried to pick us up from school. I used to narrow my eyes at passing cars and silently dare them to try to take one of us.)
Anyway, I went with this Dorothy lady willingly. She took me to a square room where she showed me all these flashcards of patterns and pictures. I had to answer a bunch of questions and recreate some of the patterns.
She had her own paper and was marking stuff on it. Her mouth moved a lot. When she would write, her lips would press into each other, then purse, then press into each other, then purse. It was weird.
But she was nice. When I finished, she told me I would have to come back for more, and I didn't mind. The work she gave me was fun. I had to put blocks together, complete sentences, add up simple problems. It was no big deal.
Or so I thought....
