There’s teachers you remember, and teachers you remember. And I remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. VeVea.

Basically it’s because I disliked her intently. Dreaded going to school disliked. Was terrified of her disliked. Hated is probably a more accurate term.

She was a strict disciplinarian, a thin-lipped disapproving woman with the demeanor of a drill sergeant and the same tragic Brillo Pad hairstyle as TV painter Bob Ross.

Her favored punishment was to make students “write words” ¹ a la Bart in The Simpsons opening credits. She would start students off with five sentences and escalate with each infraction by adding five more.

She kept the tallies in a notebook on her desk she called her “disappointment book.” My tally ended up somewhere over one hundred by the time I escaped her class.

Students who were made to write words would then present the sheets of paper – carefully numbered, of course – to her in front of the class. She would tear them up and toss them in the trash.

Later in life I befriended my grade school principal and he asked “Who was your least favorite teacher?”

“Mrs. VeVea.”

“That’s pretty much what everyone says.”

My brother and sister all had Mrs. VeVea and endured her rules and her arbitrary application of them. We all hated her.

Yet one of her rules still endures with us in a strange way.

She’d take the lunch count every morning at the beginning of class. Students who brought a lunch were required to answer “No thank you.” Students who were buying lunch, then priced at 50 cents, were required to say “Yes, please, 50 cents” as they walked to the front with their money.

Like so much in her class, it was a bizarrely regimented ritual for what was basically a roll call. It ended up burned into my brain – all our brains.

My brother, sister and I still use “Yes, please, 50 cents” to mean “emphatic yes.” Not just yes, but yes!

As in, “Do you want a beer?”

“Yes, please, 50 cents.”

I found myself saying it without even thinking today at the coffee shop. I got a bizarre look.

So here’s to you, Mrs. VeVea. Looks like you won after all.

1. Her favorite phrase to make students write as punishment was “I will act like a fourth grader.” It was a bit tautological because students typically had gotten in trouble for exactly that: acting like a fourth grader.