During my long teaching career, I took on the NYC Board of Education several times. There were many principals who went after teachers for reasons that had nothing to do with competence. It was an abuse of power and many teachers know about that nightmare.
The first big fight was in 1988 and it was regarding a few letters about me for my file written by a vindictive principal whose entire assertions were not factual, and were irrational, totally illogical, and without merit.
The UFT thwarted my grievance against the principal's unfair and inaccurate letters about me after I lost at Step 2. I appealed that decision to not pursue this issue because I was determined to go all the way to fight the absurd allegations. I presented my case at an appeal process and I was granted the right to go further. We went to Step 3.
I was strong and I would not be stopped. I was going to go the distance and fight like Rocky to the bitter end and remain standing like my life depended on it. I was on fire.
I gathered all the documentation that I needed and presented my case to the NYC Department of Education like F. Lee Bailey fighting for the appeal of Sam Sheppard.I went the distance. And I won!
That same principal wrote up another teacher for daring to drink milk and walking around with two handbags on her arm!
A few years later I was told that principal who tried to railroad me was removed from the school in handcuffs. Go figure.
And years later, I had the distinction of being perhaps the only teacher who after retirement continued to fight another injustice. It was the right thing to do. And I won. Again.
One of the more vivid and ongoing chapters of my childhood was that I was the go to kid to be teased and picked on.
Certainly in elementary school I was always the last to be picked for everything. I got it. I was a slow runner and lazy at every game. Lori chided me during kickball with "Exert yourself Marjorie" and I thought "I am." And which ever team got me, there was always a girl in the group to taunt me with: "Ew, you got Marjorie." I was the "Ew Girl."
So I suppose I fell into that role of never being popular and always the loser... and at Camp Baumann I was miserable. I was literally sent off to a camp every single day that was torture. I hated swimming, I hated sports, I hated arts and crafts. The girls ostracized me. The boys abused me during every bus ride there and back. I am surprised that at the end of the summer I still had hair on my head.
4-H camp. Those were the most awful 2 weeks away. I was filled with homesickness and those girls in my bunk chose my bed to short sheet all the time. I was so lonely one afternoon, all alone in the cabin because I had no idea how to structure free activities, that I wrote my mother a letter telling her to come get me. She did drive to Riverhead with my father and they convinced me to stay.
A kid on my block, Robin, once gathered her snark and said about sleep away summer camp: "There's a freak in every bunk." And I was always that freak. At one camp, the girls gave me the name "bird dog." I sort of got it. I was fat and ugly, with acne to boot. I slid into that role like second skin.
And high school continued to define me within that part. I was ugly. I remember not wanting to even see my own reflection in a mirror. This kid Chris would ridicule me right to my face and call me ugly. I was a real bully magnet and the poster child for misery. Even my own mother made fun of me in multiple ways all the time but this piece is not about that saga... however being called a "bump on a log" and being told I had "no personality" certainly were a few of the things that did not come from the mouths of my peers.
But, a few specific days live in my memory.
I remember when I was about 16 I had a double blind date and I was picked up first. When we arrived at the other girl's house and I got out of the car to get the other girl... those two guys drove away, making a fast getaway.... I concluded I was too ugly for even one night.
There was one specific time, probably the most hurtful, that sticks with me. It happened on New Year's Eve of 1963 going into 1964 at the Concord Hotel. I had planned my outfit well in advance. I wore a blue velvet and white satin dress with a green silk sash and had my shoes dyed green to match the dress. My mother told me I would be sitting that night at a table with other teens, all of whom were total strangers to me. My sister sat at a pre teen table and my parents sat at a table with other adults. So there I was, at a round table with 3 other girls and 4 boys. The girls were pretty, very blond and giving off a real Sandra Dee vibe. The boys looked like Frankie Avalon or maybe Fabian. And I looked sort of like a fat ugly version of Annette Funicello with acne. I opened my eyes real wide for our family photo that night because the previous night in the first family photo my eyes were closed.
For some reason, all of those teens at my table decided to abandon our table number 10 and join table 11, which had some empty seats. So all 7 of them filled those empty sets and left me sitting all alone. I thought I should at last try to sit with them so I got up and boldly asked if they could fit me and my chair in. One of those boys brazenly said: "There is no room" and the girls laughed.
I sat back alone at my table and and I cried... I was so overwhelmed with sadness. I was so hurt. I was not going to sit there and eat alone. My face must have been soaking wet because when I left that table and I went to the other side of that dining room to tell my mother I was going back up to the room, she did ask: "What happened?" But I quickly fled out of that ballroom and went upstairs.
When I was back in the room, I put on the TV and watched "Not As A Stranger" with Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum. Every time I see that movie on TCM... I remember that night.
Oh, I saw one of my tormenters, Chris, at a 30 year high school reunion and asked him why he tormented me so much back then and without missing a beat he said: "Because I was an asshole." I liked that answer.
And oh, those teens from that night? Who knows where they are now. They are probably all dead.
In the early 1990s? (the exact year escapes me) I would go on Sundays with another teacher, Angela, to a NYC restaurant (long closed) called Mulholland Drive Cafe. It was on Third Avenue and about 64th Street and it was owned by Patrick Swayze.
The place was not that big and it was a weekly hangout for Al Goldstein and his hangers on... and plenty of porn stars surrounded him. It was "Al this and Al that" and even though it was 1PM they dressed with a lot of sparkle and glitter and like they were going to a disco. Plus, I never saw heels so high. He was the center of attention and he sat on his throne there at some long table at literally a higher level at the top of a few steps. Al Goldstein, (of Screw magazine and Midnight Blue, on public access TV) was sort of famous back then in NYC.
After a few weeks, Al became more interested in me and Angela than his regular crew. So he sat with us and after we gave him some back story and information about us, he said (one of his ex wives) was a teacher. So then the conversation became all about the schools... a subject that always got me talking. It still does. So by the way, if the schools returned to a more traditional learning model with students seated in rows (not social groups) and a basal reader (not a leveled library with books grouped by genre) and textbooks in the subject areas and a strong phonemic awareness program with quiet classrooms instead of "productive noise" and again allowed teacher directed lessons instead of reducing the teacher's role to that of a facilitator, there would seriously be no child left behind. I think I would be a great U.S. Secretary of Education. I would bring back a Scott Foresman basal reader with a comprehension workbook and remove Common Core standards from the paradigm. But, I digress.
Years after that, Al was living near me... on 8th Avenue and 15th Street, and when he would pass my building, if I was outside, we would stand on the sidewalk and talk for a while... always about the schools. He seemed lonely and he would talk of his son. He was so proud of him, but talked about other issues with him.In 2004, he started working at the old Second Avenue Deli. Then, he fell on very hard times. He was unrecognizable. And soon thereafter, he passed away.
Here is a comment posted on YouTube: "I was walking down Broadway in Jackson Heights on (sic) summer night in 2004 when I passed Al. I turned around and said "Al?" He turner (sic) around. By that point he was broke and down on his luck. We had a very nice chat. Seemed like a nice man. No airs." That's the Al Goldstein I knew.
Here is an article about Al Goldstein worth reading. But the writer gets it wrong, unless there was a different "legendary brunch" restaurant on Lexington Avenue where he held court at a different time. We definitely met him at Mulholland Drive Cafe on Third Avenue.
Years later (in about 2010), I was sitting with Robyn Byrd, at a Comic Strip comedy club holiday party. We talked about the old channel J... and even about Steve Gruberg, who I also knew from the neighborhood... and whose show I would call into from time to time. Steve also passed away. Time passes so quickly. The world keeps turning.
This is a photo I took of Robyn Byrd.
WARNING!! ADULT CONTENT!!!
Do not open and watch if easily offended by mature content and words and references which could be considered offensive or tasteless. It is Al Goldstein, so expect Al to be Al.
In the 1980s, I was teaching at a NYC public school located in the midtown area of Manhattan, which received and enrolled many students from hotels which housed homeless families.
Some of those hotels were: The Carter, The Prince George, and The Martinique. The conditions in those places were very terrible and the filmmaker/actor Lee Grant made a documentary called "Down and Out in America" which told the stories of some of those residents and families who lived in those shelters.
Part 6 of the series told the story of Bruce and Kathy, who lived in The Martinique. That shelter was located on Broadway and West 32nd Street. The very old building went through changes: it was a Radisson for a while and now it is back to the name Martinique. Back then, it was total filth and squalor.
I knew Bruce and Kathy. Their children attended the school in which I was a teacher and I had one of their children in my class and Bruce brought the children to school every day. Kathy was rather quiet but Bruce talked a lot. He had a great deal of issues and problems. Theirs was a situation where you hoped help would offer up some positive change but matters were so devastating for them that a conclusion seemed fairly evident and apparent.
I remember one afternoon after school I was walking to Macy's and I saw him passed out in some seedy doorway... with one of his children sitting by his side on a step as another passerby ran to a pay phone to call for assistance.
They were not the only ones with sad lives that passed through the hallways of the schools in which I taught. But their story is the only story that became one part of a documentary you can view at the link above.
In about June of 1997, I wrote a treatment for a Seinfeld episode called "The Liquid" and then submitted it to ICM to be considered for representation. I was never sent a reply.
But, during the week of Thanksgiving that year... I was more than shocked to have received this letter (below) from Tim Kaiser, a producer of Seinfeld. He stated that: "we are returning this submission to you unread."
Apparently, my submission to ICM was not placed in the circular file. It must have been sent to the writers of Seinfeld. It was submission worthy? How else would the Seinfeld producers have received it?
I love this: "While we know that outside submissions can yield the occasional diamond in the rough..." And, "Believe me this was a difficult decision...."
How was it a difficult decision if they never read it? Oh, well. I thought the letter was gracious and kind, and I felt "stoked and pumped."
It was rejected... but guess what? I still had it and knew it was... pretty pretty pretty darn good.
So... I sent the idea to Larry David when he was starring on Broadway in "Fish in the Dark." He never replied to me.
So, after all that rejection: I did it myself in 6 parts, as "Cookie Lipschitz," who is "Yetta Telebenda's alter ego. Please follow through to the end to view all 6 parts.
This was my experience decades ago, during the summer of 1970. Mine. It is not a cautionary tale nor foolish advice for others. I am not an idiot. I know many friends and relatives who constantly travel all over the world to the most remote places and love it. But, this particular piece tells of my time in Europe. And to this day, those two weeks still live inside me. And so does that fear.
So what could go wrong with a TWA Travel Adventure? Barbara and I planned the trip to Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, and Rome. I did not realize that when Barbara invited Ilene, who would already be in Europe, to meet up with us at our first city stop... my adventure would immediately go south.
I was timid back then and very shy and quiet. I suppose that demeanor made me a bully magnet: a target for the unresolved angers of others... in school, in camp, and elsewhere. So when that "mean girl" Ilene talked dopey weak minded Barbara into dumping me and going off on daily explorations without me... Barbara agreed and off they went leaving me alone every day to decide whether, after leaving the hotel, I should wander left or go roam right. The only good day I had was going with my friend Tina to the Louvre, a meet up we had planned before we even left Manhattan since we knew we would be crossing paths during our two separate vacations.
I had one night with the two sadistic mental torturers: I have a photo of the three of us in a Madrid cafe... but to protect their identity I will not post it. Trust me, the misery on my face in the picture is palpable. Seriously, who does that? What kind of "friends" trot off and leave another girl behind to spend days and nights alone in foreign cities? I do not think it was a plan... I think Ilene instigated it and the lemming Barbara followed along.
And if that was in Barbara's nature, why didn't she let me back out when I had a change of mind about even going? That fool called my mother to tell my mother she had to convince me to still go. And of course my mother put some shtik of guilt inside me saying I would ruin Barbara's summer if I did not go.
In Rome, those two horrible girls, Barbara and Ilene, talked me into going to an isolated beach house (at some deserted location) with three guys they had just met that day. That night, we arrived there after a 45 minute drive. It was very dark and nobody else was even around.In that cabin, most of the light bulbs were broken and there was no working toilet. Some bed was turned on the side and all the furniture was broken. It was just a long wide empty beach under a moon... and us: three guys and three girls.
I think I passed out. I cannot remember how we got back to the hotel. Years later, I wondered if they used the interior of that place for the set of the film Hostel.
I remember being alone in the Lisbon hotel room one night (once again Barbara and Ilene flat left me, going off for perhaps another dangerous escapade) and wishing that when I opened my eyes the two weeks for that trip would be over. I just wanted to go home. I was so tired of having every dinner alone in a foreign country, I felt so deserted... I even got paranoid that they realized I was Jewish and restaurants were poisoning my food. I lost a great deal of weight during those two weeks away.
Anyway: even though we were an organized TWA group, we did not have structured days... we only gathered at the airports and every experience at customs was a personal nightmare. Did I look suspicious? Did I look like a smuggler? My unlocked luggage was ALWAYS picked for inspections. ALWAYS. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. I had actual hallucinations that drugs would be planted in my suitcases and I would be framed. Why? Because I was the Jew! I began to feel they had some nefarious plot to throw the American Jewish girl into a prison and that was decades before "Locked Up Abroad."
Some time later, after I was back in New York City, I read about Billy Hayes's Midnight Express Experience and thought... "there but for the grace of G-d."
The fear from that summer still lives inside me. I think that trip triggered my OCD. I was very young, changing, and just at that time did not have the skills or confidence to handle the matter or manage my situation. My thoughts were unrealistic, and as I developed and grew older I probably would have had a great time alone in those wonderful cities. Of course, I probably had a tendency to develop that anxiety disorder because I was a nervous kid and a worrier... but that trip in 1970 sealed the deal. I spent years after that going into panics that never impacted others but certainly thwarted my own life. And after that traumatic and hurtful experience that summer, I got off easy. I could have developed agoraphobia.
And though I have traveled many times to diverse locations since that time, I never went back to Europe.
(continued below)
After that year, during summers... I spent many days at Long Beach, Long Island. I never had to travel far to find a place that gave me strange comfort.
And the trips I really enjoyed after that were the "safe" ones I took with Jerry. So rest in peace, Jerry. And I still maintain you drove that night back from the Syosset movie theater with your eyes closed. And that night was the third time I saw this film:
