Miss Sinkins

There are those teachers who seem to be very popular with everyone. I don’t think Miss Sinkins was one of them. I really don’t care. What I do know is that she had a tremendous impact on my life.

She taught me English in grade 11. Up until that point, English was a struggle for me. We studied stories and learned grammar, but it was a chore. I never seemed to answer what the teachers were looking for on tests. My responses seemed reasonable to me.

I was a student who didn’t live in the attendance area of my school. At times I felt no connection with my past. I was also in the middle of puberty and all of the angst that brings. Life was pretty confusing.

What I loved about her is that she allowed me to be as weird as I wanted to be and still talked to me as someone who seemed to understand my spirit.

I particularly realized this when it came time to give speeches. We were allotted 10 minutes on any topic we chose. Mine was entitled “Why I Like Small Towns”. It was based on my experiences in Rosseau, Ontario.

Actually, it wasn’t really a speech. It was a performance. I talked to the audience and performed little skits with invisible people on stage.

My speech also went for about 40 minutes. She didn’t stop me. She let me continue until I was finished. She must have known that stopping me would have crushed me.

At the end, she asked me if I had ever read Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town, then she docked me some marks for going well over the time limit. I had never even heard of Stephen Leacock at this point, let alone read one of his books. It didn’t take me long to devour one of the great pieces of Canadian literature.

One day she came into class with a box and some cards. She wanted us to record every book we read. I was inspired. I was going to be the one who read the most books in our class. Miss Sinkins would be so proud of me.

Unfortunately, Karen was in my class. Karen really liked reading. It was like the difference between eating at a diner and an all-you-can-eat buffet. I dined on literature; Karen devoured it. I ended up with about 30 books by the end of the year, a distant second to Karen’s 60 or so.

Still, those 30 books put me on a life-changing path. Miss Sinkins was an encouragement all the way.

Ferne Sinkins, as I eventually discovered her first name to be, was invited to our high school reunion. She didn’t come. I had wanted to personally thank her for her patience and understanding of an awkward guy who was trying life on for size. And if any of you know her, let her know that Johnny V. appreciates what she did for him.