Make hockey a force for public good and national pride.
The justification for organized sports used to be character building. The saying used to be that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
When I played Rugby Union in Southwestern Ontario in the 1950s, we were expected to applaud exceptional plays by either team, like a running drop kick for a three-point field goal. We were supposed to pat our tackler on the back.
If we did lose our cool and react physically, the game stopped until the fighters shook hands.
In North America, sports became the domain of win at all cost jocks. In high school Rugby League in Pictou County, the Pictou team was accused of having nails protruding slightly from the toes of their boots.
Meanwhile the majority of jocks vehemently defended fist fights in hockey as a safety valve for more serious violence. Somehow, NFL football managed to ban it and eject fighters from the game.
Hockey Canada is now being shown to be a totally misogynistic, pro violence, hazing and tolerant of and prepared to excuse and cover up gang rape.
That entire echelon of male thugs has to go. They should be replaced by at least half women. Ad client jocks used to try to bully me into covering all their recreational leagues insisting people wanted to read it. Every research study of newspapers revealed sports had the lowest readership of any part of the paper. No one read it except the players.
Women didn’t read it at all except what their kid was in. They didn’t seem to care so much about the score and who won or lost. They wanted their kids to be safe and having fun.
I believe one of the reasons many families put their kids in soccer was to avoid the stupid violence and mismanagement of the game. Kids managed their pond and road hockey games much more intelligently. A kid didn’t get put on a losing team and left there for his whole time in that age group. Kids chose sides every game. We’d even stop if one team got a huge lead and hold a mid-game redraft to keep it interesting. This kept the players on the winning side engaged too. It meant they got more chances to touch the puck. Everybody was on the ice at the same time. We were only on the sidelines if we were exhausted. We all got all the ice time we could endure.
Hockey is beloved by Canadians. It makes other games seem glacial in comparison and offense and defence are on the ice at the same time unlike baseball or football.
Bullying and male sexual aggression are huge problems in North American society. Fitness and character building should be made prime components of the game.
Players should have it drilled into them from the beginning that hockey players are gentlemen who don’t cheat, don’t lose their cool when losing, don’t bully ANYONE, on the ice or off and don’t think group sex, consensual or non, is acceptable behaviour for boys and men of character.
Anyone who thinks that would hurt the game needs to consider the Canadian women’s hockey team. They’ve been consistently near the top of the world game without any abuse scandals other than perpetrated by males in management in lower leagues.
Time to rebuild hockey into a sport that is a force for good and pride in the world. As it is any Junior hockey players who are or were not thugs are now tarnished with the stains coming to light.
Hockey Canada and the NHL should endorse, embrace and enforce such standards for the betterment of the game and the country.

Teaching financial dependence

I have a quandary about social assistance. On the one hand, I believe we have to provide decent shelter and care for everyone. On the other, I worry we risk teaching people they are suckers to manage their incomes and savings responsibly and prepare for their retirement.

When people need assisted living their health and their income are assessed. Some people wind up paying the full rates which run to several thousand dollars every month. They use up their life savings and even their equity in their home to pay their monthly assisted living costs. Meanwhile, others are paying nothing but a share of their government financed Old Age Security and supplement. They have no equity or independent source of income to contribute.

Some of those people were good, hardworking people with unlucky employment or health records. Some were irresponsible spendthrifts who never made any effort to provide for themselves or their families.

We can’t get judgmental about that. Just one reason is that those people often have children already suffering for their parents’ hardships. There is just no economic justice to be found or sought when it comes to the care of children or people who never had the guidance or ability to make good choices or work productively. We have to provide them healthy food and shelter.

That however leaves us with the question of how to treat those folks who denied themselves the gratifications of toys and indulgences all their lives so they could educate their kids and pay their own way in retirement. It makes their discipline and sacrifice pointless and foolish if we just take their savings when they need assisted living.

The idea of the state being responsible for care for the aged is not itself old. When I was a kid, most old folk were sheltered and cared for by their families. In many cases, the child doing that got their parents’ house in recompense.

The province has made some moves to lessen the penalties for being financially responsible. We need to do more.

I like to think a guaranteed income program like Old Age Security might be the answer. That gives every Canadian a monthly payment when they reach 65. When their income is over roughly $60,000, the feds start to claw it back at the rate of 15% of the dollars above the $60k. By the time your retirement income reaches roughly $120k, you receive no more payments from OAS.

Something like that, starting at birth or adulthood, with appropriate monthly payments and upper income limits like OAS might work.

I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on this. DAC

There is a thing people find misleading and hurtful about Face Book. Most of us post items of happy, funny and positive family things. That can make people who are in hard financial, emotional or physical circumstances feel worse. I’m one of the ones with much to celebrate and I do. It would be less than honest, though, to let people think that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Our family and friends are subject to the same troubles as so many families. I don’t often mention them publicly. Often they’re not my story to tell. They belong to the person they’re happening to. I also don’t want to appear ungrateful for having fewer wounds than many.
That said, I feel a need today to mention we have cancer and all the common stresses among our family and friends. Also a side effect of being alive and well at my age is so many of my family, friends and colleagues are gone, isolated or suffering debilitating conditions. When you admire, enjoy and like as many people as I do, that means you miss and grieve for more people every year. I have family members so precious I can’t imagine I deserve them. I have, in the brilliant words of Sir Francis Bacon, “given hostages to fortune”. Fortune can take a hostage from anyone at any moment.
At present every loving parent, grand parent and decent human being in the free world is seeing little Ukrainian children and their mothers saying goodbye to their fathers and husbands and attempting to reach safety. John Donne said, “Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
All the bells in the world are tolling in our hearts. Those women, children and men were us short weeks ago.
I feel guilty for being so safe and secure and asked and able to do so little.
It is said, “Grief is the price we pay for love”. At times like these, we are reminded we also share the cost of others’ grief.               DAC

February 23, 2022
I’ve been with Trudeau from the beginning on the pandemic and the convoy insurrection. I think it will become a proud part of Canadian history. At first many Canadians were angry he was standing back. What reason would a Prime Minister have to meet with a group holding Canada’s national Capitol hostage, torturing, abusing and threatening residents, store keepers, shelter and health care workers and demanding the actual overthrow of the recently elected government of the country? Who thinks any minority has the right to demand the immediate removal of the PM and attempt to force it and expect him to meet with them? To do what, surrender?
In fact, like the airliners of 911 in the US, using trucks as weapons was a new type of terrorism. No one knew it was an occupation, not a demonstration, until they set up camp. Even if CSIS knew about the crowd funding, they, like many of the fund donors, did not realize it would be used for occupation. Who knew convoy members would use their children as shields?
Ottawa police, were guided by memories of the G 20 fiasco in Toronto and other police embarrassments. Remember that RCMP police sergeant pepper spraying students sitting on a BC university campus road while parading the Indonesian dictator and Pacific Rim leaders through their university?
I made one significant mistake in my earlier commentaries. I assumed most Canadians, and all Canadian governments and police administrations were familiar with the 1849 precedent of treating riots as crime scenes to be observed, investigated and dealt with in the criminal and civic courts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buildings_in_Montreal

Most Canadians apparently were not. If governments were, they didn’t mention it but the feds behaved as if they did. Trudeau has already pledged $20 million to businesses harmed by blockades – a feature of the 1849 policy.
It is shameful and disgusting what citizens in Ottawa and truckers across the continent had to cope with and endure at border crossings across the country. Even so, it is still much preferable that the blockades have been mostly broken without any Canadian, and especially no Canadian child, having yet been shot by another Canadian.
Pierre Eliot Trudeau’s declaration of the then War Measures Act led to the rise of the Partis Québecois which is a rift in Confederation to this day. Trudeau fils managed to suppress his rebellion without any of the random arrests that took place in the October crisis.
This crisis may well lead to a return to a Western party with separatist leanings. Public support in the East is raising the idea of Jean Charest for Conservative Leader. Charest, already a past leader of the late Progressive Conservative Party and a past Liberal Premier (aka Prime Minister) of Quebec. A PC right of centre party, led by Charest, would, I think, be considerably more likely to form a federal government than a rump western separatist party led by Pierre Poilievre, the current hard right Conservative candidate for leader. I can’t imagine Poilievre and Conservative interim leader, Candice Bergen, ever forming a national government. I hope Jake Stewart will lose his seat for proudly, publicly, creating a photo op supporting the treasonous rebellion.
Poisonous trolls, like FOX News in the US, continue to spread dispicable lies. FOX reported that RCMP horses killed a woman – a flat out lie. They also reposted a convoy trucker’s claim that the majority of Canadians support them. Conservative Members of Parliament are posting claims that donors to the convoy funds are having their bank accounts frozen – also lies.
To me the scene of police silently and steadily moving forward, pushing back and separating insurrectionists and supporters was beautiful. The dismantling of the camps, playgrounds, hot tubs and kitchens was methodical and threat starving. I haven’t heard any suggestions how the big trucks could be removed without huge tow trucks whose owners were also being terrorized by convoy participants until the the Emergency Measures Act gave the policing co-operative authority to commandeer them.
What remains is still a gawdawful mess. There are millions of images, dozens of rooftop surveillance posts, drone footage and an encyclopedia of public social media and convoy threads to be studied.
I believe, hope and trust that Prime Minister Trudeau’s and his cabinet’s performance will be recognized as a model to democracies of the world and an honoured precedent in Canadian civil rights history.                                           DAC

March 29, 2012

The Order of New Brunswick Advisory Council
Intergovernmental Affairs
Office of Protocol
670 King Street, Room 174
P.O. Box 6000
Fredericton, NB E3B 5H1

Re. Raymond Fraser nomination for the Order of New Brunswick

Dear Advisory Council members:

It has been my pleasure to know Ray Fraser since 1976. I think his contribution to and involvement in the New Brunswick arts community over that time and before make him a highly qualified candidate for the Order of New Brunswick.
In his books, Ray captured the characters of the Miramichi I came to know more clearly and accurately than anyone else.
It is difficult for a journeyman wordsmith and scribe like myself to explain but it is important that I try to help you appreciate what Ray accomplished. There are elements of the Miramichi character combined in ways I had never seen elsewhere, before or since.
Wicked wit is part of it. Hot temper and violence are two more. Amazing generosity and a talent for care giving are two more. Speaking one’s mind vehemently is another along with the expectation that you will too. Miramichiers may dislike what you say but they expect you to have an opinion and do not respect you if you do not express it.
Ray captured all this and one more, perhaps most defining, Miramichi characteristic of which he is just about the most dramatic example I have met. His characters are as amused as distraught by the consequences of their actions and flaws. They are more inclined to laugh at themselves than whine and blame others.
I don’t think anyone really got all that down as clearly and consistently as Ray Fraser. The closest comparison I can think of occurs in Alden Nowlan’s “The Unhappy People,” the message of which totally belies the title.
The honesty of his writing cuts much closer to home than that of anyone else I can think of.
Ray was, of course, one of the key members of the gang of New Brunswick literary rascals responsible for so much irreverence, fun and imaginative activity in New Brunswick in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a member of the promotion of Jim Stewart as the proper king of England as the heir to the Stewart line. Begun as a game to attract the attention of young women to the shy Jim, the scheme became a world-wide media story.
He was an active member of Leo Ferrari’s “Flat Earth Society,” another game which challenged conventional wisdom and again generated international media buzz.
In addition to his novels and creative social activities, Ray has also written biographies which are and long will be significant records of Miramichiers of our time.
Of these, his biography of “The Fighting Fisherman,” Yvon Durelle is a treasure. When Yvon was on trial for the shooting death of Albin Poirier and being defended by the young Miramichi stars of the New Brunswick bar, Dennis Lordon and Frank McKenna, my Miramichi Leader could not spare a staff member to spend weeks in court. Ray’s then wife, Sharon, was editor of the paper at the time and we were able to get Ray to cover the case.
His understanding of the Miramichi and Miramichiers, his intelligence and his writing skills led to brilliant coverage of the case and provided him with important knowledge when he eventually wrote the biography.
His biography of Todd Matchett, one of the men who, with Allan Legere, was convicted of the murder of Black River Bridge storekeeper, John Glendenning, deals with the dark side of the Miramichi. One year, I calculated that the per capita murder rate in our county exceeded that of the city of Detroit.
Ray’s biography, “Todd Matchett, Confessions of a Young Criminal,” describes the process that set Matchett on his path in the lurid detail necessary to make more normal readers understand. It not only explains Matchett but also the side of Miramichi society at that time that made him and others like him not only possible but inevitable. It is not a story unique to Miramichi but it was certainly common there and a useful piece of the long and vivid historical record of the fabled region.
Others than myself will be more useful sources of information regarding his athletic abilities and contributions to the Miramichi and New Brunswick.
Among his many accomplishments that have made a big impression on me is his now three-decades-long success combatting alcoholism.
In conclusion, to me, Ray Fraser’s work represents brilliant portrayal of his region, startling honesty, wit, and compassion.
His personal life helped create and celebrate what I remember as the most colourful and joyful New Brunswick literary era.
His reportage in his biographies give us a lasting, accurate record of ground-level life in his region in his time.
His time and the future, in Miramichi and New Brunswick, would be much poorer without his work.
We should recognize his valuable contribution with inclusion in the Order of New Brunswick.
Sincerely,
David Cadogan

I’m not a lawyer so perhaps expat Miramichier, Rob Currie, Dean of the Shulich School of Law, Dalhousie University,  will correct or clarify this.
Several pundits and citizens have posted criticisms of the Supreme Court of Canada for failing to define what “A moderate livelihood” means with regard to First Nations fishing rights.
To me, what the court was clearly saying it is not up to their court to decide. For one thing, courts do not make law, they interpret it. In some cases, their decisions have a big effect on law but the courts can only say what the law is, or cannot be. They can’t say what it should be.
The main thing they said, I believe, is they have limited jurisdiction over First Nations’ fishing rights. I believe they have ruled non-indigenous rights can be subject to conservation limitations.
Beyond that, however, I think they are saying the definition of those rights is not up to the court or the federal government to define. Our forefathers forgot to cheat the First Nations out of a few things, including their fishing rights, when they negotiated the treaty regarding sharing of resources.
Our courts and our government, therefore have to negotiate with First Nations regarding any change in those rights.
They can no more summarily ignore or change those rights than Danish citizens could ignore or change our laws or regulations while in Canada.
A better example might be that Americans cannot bring hand guns or automatic weapons into Canada although they have the right to have them at home.
Canadians find it obvious to the point of being hilarious that Americans turn up at our border every year insisting that because the Sheriff they elected at home deputized them, they can bring their guns into Canada.
Many of us don’t it find it as obvious or funny that we cannot just say to the First Nations, our law trumps the treaty we signed with you.
Neither do we have the right to specify which treaty rights we renegotiate.
First Nations leaders point out that when we want to renegotiate, it is always to add restrictions on their rights.
“If we are going to open the treaty for renegotiation,” they ask, “why not open the entire treaty?”.
It does not seem our government likes that idea. In any case, after 20 years, it has not happened and cannot until First Nations agree to the parameters.
After the violence over the same lobster issues at Burnt Church occurring now in Nova Scotia, there was a commission appointed to hear opinions from the public. Roger Augustine, Regional Chief, and Mr. Justice Guy Richard interviewed me. I suggested one justifiable solution would be to turn the fishery over to the First Nations and let them operate its licensing and regulation. Chief Augustine’s and Justice Richard’s body language indicated they considered that the most outlandish and unlikely idea they’d heard.
That gives you an idea of how much weight all of us, including First Nations members think we give to treaty rights.
Just don’t blame the Supreme Court for not solving the issue.
They know they do not have sole jurisdiction.          DAC

Rob Currie’s reply:

I’m no expert on treaty rights, David, but I think you have expressed it correctly. The SCC might have had jurisdiction to go deeper on defining the treaty rights, but it didn’t have the evidence before it to do so, and in any event it quite correctly saw that there would be far more legitimacy if a negotiated solution was reached; their goal in Marshall 1, I think, was to try to set the scene for the negotiations. The Marshall 1 judgment is deeply flawed in a number of ways, and it’s arguable that the court made some mistakes, but that is water under the bridge now, as they say. The second Marshall decision did indeed clarify that the “moderate livelihood” right was nonetheless subject to regulation for conservation purposes.

 

 

I’m feeling a bit guilty for having so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving week-end.
Being retired, I can engage with the outside world at my own convenience and at the quiet times of the day and week.
I live in New Brunswick where the Premier is decisive and aggressive in taking action to protect us all.
I live in Canada where the governments respect and follow scientific guidance.
The businesses I depend on, especially Sobeys, have been especially protective, although I did catch manager, Joey MacDonald, laughing as he watched me try to open a flimsy vegetable bag without licking a finger.
I don’t personally know anyone who has been hit by the pandemic.
My family are well so far although I am scared for our daughter, son in law and their son and daughter in a suburb of Lévis, in the Quebec City hot zone.
Last weekend we picked up some pumpkins from Ralph Lockerbie’s vegetable stand. Each year he gives a dollar to the hospital foundation for each pumpkin sold on that Saturday. My community is renowned for such generosity.
We know a woman who has had a serious illness that will be a threat for the rest of her life. She and her husband are childless which stings all who know them because they would have been wonderful parents.
Last week, she was invited to a staff member birthday party. When she got there, it was not a birthday party at all. She and her husband had chosen two Miramichi pups to adopt when they are old enough.
The staff party was actually a puppy shower for her. They gave her beds, vet certificates for puppy shots, food, toys, everything they’ll need.
I am so thankful those are the kinds of people around us in this corner of the world. That puppy shower is interesting for being kind and imaginative. The best thing about it is, it is not the least surprising here.
I have so much to be thankful for and wish all the good people out there were as fortunate. I can’t imagine how single parents with no extended family support or support too far away to help manage to keep physically and mentally okay.
I have friends and family far and wide. I am especially fearful for friends in Florida with both President Trump and Governor DeSantis are both leaving them totally unprotected.
Like our Canadian federal and provincial leaders or not, most of us don’t think they are the biggest part of the problem. We don’t expect violent disruption of our elections or governments trying to block our access to voting.
My Thanksgiving wish for you is that, stressed as you may be, you can find some sanctuary, peace and comfort Thanksgiving day and always.

May 5, 2020

We are seeing the end of newspapers as my generation knew them. Covid-19 is the last spike in the heart of many print versions. Stores aren’t open. Consumers are not out shopping. Such advertisers as there are are buying time and space on other media, especially on the World Wide Web. Newspapers are dying, reducing publishing frequency and dramatically reducing in size.

Advertising made up 80% of revenue for most of my newspaper career. Circulation made up 20%

Both of those sources have been under attack since the 1970s. By that time, retail chains were becoming national. They could print one advertising supplement, aka flyer, and distribute it in many markets instead of paying dozens of newspapers to recreate it for their one publication.

At first they paid roughly the cost of a half page ad in the paper to have entire, full-colour sections they provided included. 

Next, Canada Post naturally wanted advertising flyers as clients in their system rather than tagging along with papers. Their problem was that community newspapers had extremely favourable second class postal rates granted during a time when governments had no easy way to get messages out to scattered Canadians.

Canada Post solved that problem by cutting prices well below their cost of delivery. They could fend off competition from papers and other competitors by including rural distribution as a loss leader.

Eventually, a federal commission established Canada Post was cheating which they were but had been driven to it and ordered it out of the business.

That simply drove advertisers with flyers to private distributors which, by that time, were large newspaper or printing chains.

The retail chains that could succeed without local papers also crippled local, independent retailers who could not match the chain economies.

The urbanization of industry, commerce and services favoured some markets and harmed others. Moncton, for example, does well at the expense of NB’s East Coast and  North Shore.

The internet disrupted various forms of communication. Books became available to read or listen to and share on computers which became smaller and more portable.

Movies moved from theatres to tv to computer, often pirated from the copyright owners.

Same thing with the music industry. Most music is now available on YouTube and on subscription services. Much is not paid for.

In each case, a modern new business is based on stealing and selling someone else’s work, property, and income earning ability and keeping the proceeds for yourself.

There has always been some of this. People have copied and circulated published, printed, recorded and filmed copyright material for as long as they could. Jocks even used to solicit sponsorships for teams saying, “And you will get all kinds of advertising in the paper.”

Workers wouldn’t like it if most of their pay check was deposited to someone else’s account.

News and public relations are free. Advertising is the lifeblood of the paper. People thought it was not just good but great to sell my product to their sponsors. They would actually get angry at me for not including the sponsor’s name in news reports.

Now, avoiding paying for the cost of time and overhead of actually paying the cost of finding, explaining and delivering news and commentary has provided some of the biggest, richest corporations in the world with free inventory. Just take what others produced and sell it to your own advertising clients. Note that word, “finding.” Good news organizations spend a lot finding what is news and also what isn’t.

Meanwhile we all take advantage of the daily bargain we find on Google. 

Unfortunately for all of us, it means all the news, good and bad, is disappearing like Polar ice. As social networks provide the stolen stories from newspapers, the number of reporters and the number of news pages has to shrink along with the revenue. By the time I sold the local papers, we were spread so thin, we might have only time and space for one source for an article. Less he said and then she said. More just he said.

Now we’re lucky if a story is even unique to our region. That is not the current owner, publisher’s fault.

Not only have publishing firms been looted by pirates, they are now trying to provide service while the declining client advertisers they have managed to hang onto are closed by the pandemic.

You and I both support the business plan that is killing independent news. Together we are killing the golden goose that brings us information we need to protect and monitor our lives, families, incomes, laws and freedoms.

It would help if our federal government made it law for people reproducing copyright material for revenue have to pay for that content.

The printed form of newspapers will probably disappear. Local news organizations could exist if they can be the ones being paid for their work.

Dark times. DAC

This article excited and inspired me when it was originally published in 2010. I think it could make a wonderful play or movie. Lane DeGregory is a Pulitzer Prize journalist with the now Tampa Bay Times. I’m posting this copyright material because the article has already disappeared once in a Times IT update. I’m afraid I could lose it.

For teenagers at a school for troubled girls, etiquette classes open another world. A job at the mall. A first dress and high heels. The courage to look in the mirror. By Lane DeGregory, now Tampa Bay Times

Published Mar. 30, 2010

The girls had grown up poor, lost their parents to drugs and jail and God knows what. They emerged from childhood uncouth and unrefined. Most had never put on makeup, set a table or eaten at a nice restaurant. – Not one of them had ever walked in heels. – Now teenagers, they were all classmates at a school for troubled girls. When a counselor told them they had to take an etiquette class, they protested. – Why would someone who was always hungry want to know how to throw a dinner party? If you weren’t sure you wanted to go on living, why would you care about being a lady? – Today, in a special report, writer Lane DeGregory and photographer Kathleen Flynn show what happened when an idealistic teacher tried to make diamonds out of coal. – Can knowing which fork to use change a girl’s life?

* * *

ETIQUETTE (et´i kit; also, -ket´) n. (Fr etiquette, lit., TICKET)

1.the forms, manners, and ceremonies established by convention as acceptable or required in social relations, in a profession, or in official life- Webster’s New World College Dictionary

* * *
They had just finished lunch, were just crumpling paper napkins into trash bins, when the call came through the school speakers:

“Will the following girls please report to the conference room . . .”

The teenagers looked at each other. What was going on?

“Lindsey,” said the voice coming through the speaker. A girl with green bangs hung her head.

“Spring,” the voice continued. In the corner of the lunchroom, a 15-year-old huddled behind her black curtain of hair. Dark liner smudged her eyes. She looked as if she had been crying.

The voice called several other names. Finally it said: “Chayna.” A girl with a short ponytail cringed. The look on her face said: What did I do now?

They trudged into the conference room, 10 girls wearing a kind of slacker uniform – jeans and flip-flops and baggy school T-shirts. They dropped into swivel chairs around a long table.

A whiteboard listed some of the things that could get you in trouble here at PACE Center for Girls: “Racist slurs. Smuggling drugs or weapons. Bad behavior.”

On another wall, a framed print showed a dirt road winding beneath cherry trees. The picture carried a quote from Norman Vincent Peale. “People become really remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things.”

The girls didn’t read the walls. They spun in their chairs, played with their hair.

Guidance counselor Kedine Johns waited for them to get settled. She was 25, slender and graceful, with long dark hair, almond eyes and perfect posture. On weekends, she modeled for charity events. At school she always wore pencil skirts, stiletto heels and just enough makeup. To the girls at PACE, such a woman seemed completely alien.

“Today, I’m starting a new class for you all,” the counselor said. “It’s a semester-long group session on etiquette.”

The girls groaned. One yawned. Another propped her feet on the table.

“Do any of you know what etiquette is?”

None of them did.

* * *
FIRST DAY

The PACE Center for Girls – a free school operated by a statewide nonprofit agency – is in a long, low office building in downtown Lakeland. It has 45 students. They are 12 to 17, almost all living in poverty, each struggling with something.

Their parents are in jail or they have been locked up themselves. They have drug problems. They have babies. A few have hurt people. Several have tried to kill themselves. Many have dropped out or been kicked out of other schools.

PACE is their last resort.

The acronym stands for Practical Academic Cultural Education. Students learn English and math and history, but also how to look for a job and get along with their parents. They work in small groups, and they know it’s okay to leave class to cry or scream or just talk to someone.

Kedine Johns – the students call her Miss Kedine – became a PACE guidance counselor in January 2009, after receiving her master’s degree in counseling. At first, she cried every night. The girls were all so hurt, so damaged. She worked with one girl who got adopted after her mother died – only to have her adoptive mother die, too. Another teen got pregnant and miscarried three times in a year.

“So much sadness,” Miss Kedine recalled telling her own mother.

What struck her even more was how the girls behaved. Miss Kedine grew up in a big family in rural Jamaica, sheltered and loved. She was raised to be a lady and to appreciate manners. She never fidgeted, never seemed flustered. In the hard plastic chairs at school, she sat like a queen.

She never imagined girls could be like this.

The PACE girls swore. They mumbled and slouched. They ate with their fingers and let boys call them “Hey, Baby.” Many had never had their hair done or used makeup. They wore undershirts because they couldn’t afford bras or didn’t know how to buy them. They didn’t say thank you.

Other instructors could teach the students to master algebra and read a map. But what good would that do if the girls went for a job interview wearing flip-flops, chewing their hair, not knowing to cross their ankles or look the interviewer in the eye?

Last fall, Miss Kedine approached her principal with a plan. She wanted to create a new class in etiquette. She would write her own curriculum, using information from books, the Internet and the skills she had learned in childhood. Over eight weeks, with a small group of girls, she would cover everything from deodorant to dating to dinner parties.

Principal Michele DeLoach was intrigued. Certainly the girls needed polishing, and she wanted to get to them before life hardened them even more.

She just wasn’t sure they would listen, or care.

Would a girl who had been sexually abused want to hear about proper behavior on a date? Would a teenager who was always hungry have the patience to learn about dinner parties?

It was My Fair Lady, with a young Jamaican teacher as Henry Higgins and a bunch of coarse small-town kids as Eliza Doolittle.

“We don’t have funds to start a new program,” the principal told Miss Kedine. “But if you want to try it, I’m behind you. You can handpick your girls.”

The counselor called her class Introduction to Etiquette.

The principal called it the Swan Project.

In the conference room, on that warm Tuesday in October, Miss Kedine smoothed her skirt and looked over her girls.

Lindsey seemed angry: arms folded, one foot tapping under the table. Spring was still hiding behind her dark hair. Chayna looked bored.

Miss Kedine took a breath.

“Sooo, etiquette,” she started. None of the girls looked up. “You know, manners, class, being a lady.”

“Who wants to be a lady?” someone muttered. Someone else laughed.

“You are all ladies, whether you want to be or not. This is about how you carry yourself, how you present yourself to the world.”

Lindsey leaned forward, cut her eyes. “Okay, I mean that’s cool and all,” she said. “But is there a reason we have to do this? I don’t really want to be here.”

The counselor forced a smile, soldiered on.

“We’re going to learn a lot of interesting stuff this semester, like how to shake hands and address people. No, ‘Whuzzups?’ or ‘Hey girl!’ in here,” she said.

The girls looked confused. “What’s wrong with that?” Lindsey asked.

“We’re going to learn about grooming, hygiene and makeup,” Miss Kedine continued. “Posture, eye contact. The proper way to sit.”

“There’s a proper way to sit?” someone asked. At least now some were listening.

“We’ll talk about buttering bread and cutting meat. Eating soup and setting a table. And at the end of the semester, there will be a treat.”

A few girls looked up.

“A final exam.”

They looked away again. Some treat.

Miss Kedine explained: The last class would be a field trip. She would take them to a fancy restaurant with china plates, linen napkins and a full setting of silverware. She would join them all at a proper luncheon.

“What’s a luncheon?” asked Chayna (pronounced SHAY-na).

Most of these girls had never left Polk County; one thought Tampa was a state. Of the 10 in class, only three had ever eaten at a restaurant other than a fast-food joint. Spring asked: Does Golden Corral count?

Miss Kedine had grown up with elegant restaurant dinners, big formal family meals at home. Until she moved to Florida when she was 15, she had never been to a Burger King, never seen people eat with their fingers. Now she would have to help these girls understand her world.

“It will be so much fun and we’ll get all dressed up, and we’ll get to see how beautiful you girls can be,” she told them. Again, the girls groaned.

None of them – not one – owned a dress.

* * *
The second week, Miss Kedine moved her girls from the conference room to the cafeteria, where the air smelled like fried food, body odor and cheap perfume.

The students slid into plastic chairs and crossed their arms. Spring cupped her chin in her hands. Chayna balled her fists. Two girls already had been kicked out of the group for fighting.

“Okay, sit up straight,” Miss Kedine said. “Both feet on the floor. Today we’re going to talk about respect.”

“Oh I got a lot of respect,” one girl said, rolling her eyes. “For me.”

The counselor let it pass. She started to talk about how you should respect your parents when she noticed she was one girl short.

Lindsey was missing. Again.

“Does anyone know where she is?”

Lindsey Kennedy, proud to be “almost 18,” was the oldest girl in etiquette class, and the most popular. She was a good listener, patient and always eager to help. Buy someone a soda, give someone a ride.

But the other girls didn’t know much about her, didn’t understand why she missed school so often. They didn’t know that helping others was Lindsey’s way of masking her own hurt.

Lindsey’s parents split when she was little. She and her younger brother and sister bounced between their homes for years. Both parents later married other people and then divorced again. Her dad lost his job, and her mom got mixed up with meth.

Lindsey had been a good student, a cheerleader, even a coach for her little sister’s squad. Now she was skipping classes, hanging out with the wrong kids, crashing on people’s couches. She dropped out of school in 10th grade.

“I’ve been pretty much grown and on my own,” she said, “since I was 14.”

She had sex with a boy once, but it felt wrong. Soon she started dating girls. When she told her dad she was gay, he wouldn’t speak to her at first. She told herself she didn’t care; what did she need his approval for?

Lindsey’s closest friend was a girl she had known most of her life. Candy was the kind of friend, she said, who made you believe in yourself. You’re smart, Lindsey remembered her saying. You can do anything. Candy wanted Lindsey to go back to school and become a nurse, just as Lindsey had always said she would.

One night about a year ago, Candy came over to Lindsey’s uncle’s house, where she was staying. The girls watched TV and listened to music. They didn’t drink or take drugs, Lindsey said (the police later confirmed this). The next morning Lindsey learned that Candy had been killed in a car accident on her way home.

She got Candy’s name tattooed on the back of her neck, to honor her. She started going to PACE, got a job slinging tacos at Tijuana Flats and saved enough money to buy an ancient Camaro. She put Candy’s picture in the dashboard, by the instrument panel, for inspiration.

Lindsey’s classmates didn’t know about her loss, or what her life was like now. Most afternoons, after a full day of school, she picked up her nephew at day care, took him home, changed his diaper and fed him peanut butter and jelly – or something. She sat next to him at the breakfast bar, eating cereal or a sub or whatever passed for her dinner that night.

Forks were not usually required.

When her uncle got home, Lindsey went to work, often pulling a full shift, 3 to 11 p.m. After that, she just wanted to go somewhere and collapse. Lately she was staying with her uncle, though sometimes she bunked with friends, or at her dad’s, or in the Camaro.

After all that, she was often too tired or overwhelmed to go to school. Sometimes she stayed away for days, and Miss Kedine would go looking for her. She always found her asleep.

Lindsey still talked to Candy even though Candy was gone. Behind her cracked steering wheel, smoking a Marlboro Menthol, Lindsey would tell Candy about her job, her new girlfriend, even about etiquette.

When the class met for the third time, Lindsey strolled into the lunchroom and plopped into a chair beside Chayna. No one asked where she had been, and she didn’t offer.

She picked at her fingernails while Miss Kedine talked about hygiene – brushing your teeth, showering and shaving. Stuff she already knew.

Lindsey didn’t think she needed this class. Anyone could see she was more refined than some of the other girls. She wore lots of jewelry: three necklaces, jangly bracelets, rings on every finger. She underscored her eyes with navy liner and smiled when she spoke. And she highlighted her hair with a different color every week, often pulling it into a ponytail or fountain.

Today her hair was dark eggplant, streaked with gold.

Besides, she knew how to behave in a nice restaurant: She had been to Olive Garden.

But Miss Kedine had chosen her for a reason: Lindsey would graduate soon, and the counselor saw this as a chance to give the girl a shine.

She also knew that if Lindsey bought in, the other girls might do the same.

When Miss Kedine began talking about looking for work, Lindsey sat up.

“Do you know the right way to greet a stranger,” the counselor asked, “someone who might meet you for an interview?”

She showed the girls how to introduce themselves and shake hands firmly. “You don’t have to squeeze, but don’t be flimsy,” she said. She made each of them practice with her. “Okay,” she told Lindsey. “But don’t pull away so fast. You want to hold on for at least a couple of seconds.” Lindsey nodded.

“And look me in the eye,” said Miss Kedine. “You want to make eye contact, let people know you’re listening.” Lindsey stared at her counselor, still holding her hand. Miss Kedine laughed. “It’s okay to blink.”

Next, they worked on posture. Back straight, shoulders squared, no slouching – whether you’re sitting or standing. “The way you carry yourself says a lot about you,” said Miss Kedine. “Your bearing, the way you sit and walk.”

She told the girls to get a book. Any hardback book. Lindsey grabbed a Stephen Hawking book, and Spring took one about co-dependency. “You’re going to need to hold yourself very straight to balance your book,” Miss Kedine said, planting a thesaurus on her head. “Don’t shuffle. Lift your feet. Chin up, don’t look down.”

She glided across the lunchroom, the book barely wobbling. She stopped in front of Chayna, who hadn’t bothered to get a book, and placed the thesaurus on her head. It slid off. “You’re going to have to practice this,” she said. “You’ve got to be able to do this in heels.”

Chayna shook her head, dislodging the book. “No way, never. I can’t walk in those.”

“That’s why you need to practice,” Miss Kedine said. “Now let’s see you all try.”

Lindsey led the way, taking small steps, holding steady. The other girls tried to follow. But Spring kept staring at her feet. Chayna padded heavily in her flip-flops. Their books kept sliding off.

Soon Miss Kedine turned to a new subject: how to behave on a date.

“What do you do when someone holds the door for you, or pulls out your chair?”

“Why they pulling out your chair?” asked one of the girls.

“Oh,” the counselor smiled. “They’re not trying to dis you. It’s a common act of courtesy. And you don’t plop into your chair, you slide. Smoothing your skirt beneath you.”

AwThe girls laughed. As if any of them would ever wear a skirt.

Soon the hour was over, and Miss Kedine told the girls she would see them next Tuesday.

That weekend, Lindsey had a job interview at the coffee shop in Lakeland Square mall. She liked Tijuana Flats, but this job sounded better and it paid more. She was nervous as she drove to the interview, tumbling over everything Miss Kedine had told her.

When the manager of Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Co. extended his hand, Lindsey shook it, smiled and met his eyes. When he pulled out a chair for her, she slid in gracefully, in her new, nonripped jeans. She told him she had experience, worked hard, loved people and wanted all the hours he could give her.

She said, “I can handle a lot.”

She started the next week.

* * *

SPRING

For the fourth class, Miss Kedine brought in a big cardboard box. She set it on the long table in front of the lunchroom and greeted her girls.

Another student had been kicked out for fighting. Seven of the original 10 remained.

“Today you’re going to get to do place settings,” Miss Kedine said, bouncing a bit in her high heels. “I brought us all sorts of plates and cups and silverware.”

She reached into the box and began unloading foam dishes and plastic utensils. The school couldn’t afford china or flatware, so these items would have to do.

The utensils had colored dots on them, each one carefully applied by Miss Kedine herself. She handed out a printed guide to the colors. The fork with the red sticker was the dinner fork. The orange one was the seafood fork. Green was salad, yellow, cake.

The forks and plates and so forth were to be arranged according to a guide to holiday entertaining that Miss Kedine had printed from the Internet.

“Four forks?” Lindsey laughed. “Who needs four forks?” Her hair was ash blond now, with walnut streaks.

“You’ll get four forks when we go out for our luncheon. And you’ll need to know which one to use for what,” Miss Kedine said. “Haven’t any of you ever set a table?”

Chayna yawned. “I saw someone do that on TV one time. I didn’t get it.” Most of Chayna’s diet – burgers, chicken nuggets and fries her mom brought home from her job at McDonald’s – required no silverware.

Miss Kedine just shook her head. “Okay, girls, now come on up and get your place settings.”

In the back of the room, Spring sat alone. As usual. When the other girls came forward, she didn’t move. She just stared at the diagram, breathing hard, her hands shaking.

“Spring, you okay?” asked the counselor. All the girls turned to look. Spring covered her face with her sweaty hands. “Spring?”

Miss Kedine crossed the room, put her hand on Spring’s shoulder, rubbed her back.

“It is a lot, isn’t it? So many things to remember,” the counselor said. Spring started sobbing. “It’s okay. We’ll all help you. You still have a month. You can practice at home.”

The girl took her hands from her face, looked up at Miss Kedine. “You don’t understand,” she sighed.

“At my house we don’t even have four forks.”

Spring Waterloo could always feel the panic coming, small waves building to big. Whenever she was overwhelmed or scared, she had attacks. Her body would go numb. Her face melted into a blank mask.

It feels, she said, like someone is pressing a heavy board on your chest and you can’t gulp enough air. It looks all wavy, like seeing everything in a fun house mirror. It sounds as if you’re underwater, everything all muffled and far away. It tastes like bile.

Miss Kedine had been working with Spring for months, even before this class started, trying to calm her. She felt she knew Spring’s story, why she suffered.

Spring didn’t think Miss Kedine could understand. The counselor was too pretty; everybody loved her.

What if you weren’t like that? What if you hated your body, your face, even your stupid smile? What if your brother was smart and your sister was popular and your mom worked long hours and was always stressed and your daddy was the only one who really loved you – but then he died?

“How would you feel,” Spring asked, “if that was you?”

She was 11 when her father had the heart attack. Spring remembers lying on the living room floor, watching Jerry Springer, calling her dad’s cell phone to see why he hadn’t come home. When her mother finally showed up with her brother and sister, everyone knew but her.

She wore a flowered dress to the funeral. She hadn’t worn a dress since.

Over the next few years, she moved a dozen times. “We were always getting kicked out of places,” she said. “Mostly we just couldn’t make the rent.”

By the time Spring got to Lakeland High, she was having panic attacks every day. She would be walking down the hall, daydreaming in math class, or standing in line in the cafeteria, and she’d just freak out. The second semester of ninth grade, she stopped going to school. Stopped going anywhere.

She got so scared of being alone, she wouldn’t even take a shower. She was 14, and her mom had to bathe her.

She would sit in her room all day, using a razor blade to carve long, thin slices into her thighs. The feeling of warm blood trickling down her legs was like a drug, she said, “like I was blocking out all the other hurt and releasing happiness. Or something.”

Did she want to kill herself? “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t really care.”

A private counselor suggested PACE and spent months convincing Spring that she could cope there. She finally enrolled in April 2009. And though the attacks came less frequently, they were just as strong.

She sat by herself at school, barely talked in class, never ate the free lunch. She wouldn’t let anyone see her eat.

“Who wants to see a fat girl stuff her face?”

Spring’s brother and sister were grown and gone. She lived with her mom, a paralegal, and her mom’s boyfriend, “who sells cars or something.”

When her mom had enough money to put gas in her van, she picked Spring up from school. Otherwise, Spring got a bus pass from one of the teachers and rode a couple of miles to her lonely duplex.

Laundry filled the living room – jeans and T-shirts wadded on the sofa, sweats and underwear spilling across the floor. Spring couldn’t remember what was clean, what was dirty. The only table, in a corner that was meant to be a dining room, ached under weeks of newspapers, a CD player and a box of panty liners.

Spring and her mom never ate at the table. They almost never ate together at all.

Sometimes, when there was food, Spring would make herself a frozen pizza or waffle and eat sitting on her bed. Sometimes her mom would bring home a Publix sub. Sometimes Spring went hungry. She stashed packages of ramen noodles under her bed.

In her best moments she imagined a different future. She hoped to get a job at Publix, or maybe Winn-Dixie. She would start jogging and finish high school and maybe even go to college. Someday, she hoped, she would be a model, like Miss Kedine.

Each week in class, the counselor reiterated the finer points of table-setting.

She set the plastic foam cups before the girls, helped them position the plasticware. Start with the outside utensil, she told them, and work your way in.

She showed her students how to eat soup: “Scoop the spoon away from you; don’t slurp.” How to break off a bite of bread and butter that instead of spackling the whole slice. How to unfold their napkins, place them on their laps, and dab at their lips instead of wiping.

“And when you’re cutting meat, you don’t cut up the whole thing before you start eating,” said Miss Kedine. “You cut a single bite, then eat that.”

“Man, you should’ve brought us steak so we could practice!” Lindsey said.

“Well, I didn’t bring steak,” said Miss Kedine, reaching into the big box. “But I brought chicken.”

Spring got scared. Was Miss Kedine going to make her eat in front of everyone?

The counselor pulled out squares of paper. The school couldn’t afford real meat. So the girls had to practice on paper chicken.

The lessons continued: Hair care and color. Manicures and nail polish. Walking in high heels.

As the weeks passed, Miss Kedine showed the girls how to trim their cuticles, slide on a pair of stockings, use oatmeal to make a cleansing mask. She gave the girls facials. None of them had ever had a facial.

Miss Kedine saw the girls growing less resistant. They made fewer snide comments, didn’t slouch as much. Sometimes they stopped by her office to borrow deodorant.

Two days before Thanksgiving, she canceled class. PACE teachers went to Publix and bought turkey and stuffing, corn bread and cranberry sauce, and served a feast in the lunchroom.

Miss Kedine couldn’t wait for her girls to show off their new manners. “Okay, everyone bring a plate up here and help yourselves,” she called.

She smiled as her girls placed paper napkins in their laps. Nodded approvingly as they cut one bite of turkey at a time.

But when dessert arrived, etiquette excused itself and left the room.

A girl picked up the whipped cream and squirted it into her mouth. Another smeared some across Chayna’s face. Someone flung banana pudding across the room and shouted, “Food fight!”

In the back of the room, Spring licked the frosting off an orange cupcake. It was the first time anyone had seen her eat.

On the eighth Tuesday, a tall girl strode into class, sporting long, scarlet nails, a hint of gloss shimmering on her lips.

“Oooh, look at Spring!” someone shouted. Her hair was mahogany now, with thick auburn highlights, tied with a white ribbon.

“Don’t you look nice,” said Miss Kedine. Blushing, Spring slid into her seat. But her hands didn’t sweat, her stomach didn’t clench. A month had gone by since she’d had a panic attack.

“I’m so glad you ladies are here. You know, this is our last class,” said Miss Kedine. The girls groaned. The teenagers who had hated the idea of etiquette class now didn’t want it to end.

“You all learned so much. You ladies surprised me,” said Miss Kedine. “Now, let’s go over what we have learned.”

On the first day of class, the counselor had asked the girls about self-esteem. Lindsey liked herself, was proud of her independence. Chayna said she was “working on it.” Back then, Spring wouldn’t even look in the mirror.

“So where are you all today?” Miss Kedine asked. “Has anything changed?”

One girl said she felt fancy now, because she knew what rich people knew. Another said she was ready to meet the queen.

Spring crossed her ankles, combed back her hair with her fake nails.

“Okay, I’m about to be really honest with y’all here,” she said. She glanced around the room at the faces of her new friends, then locked eyes with Miss Kedine.

“I’ve been working on this. You’ve helped me see it, some,” she said, touching her forehead. “I guess, except for this pimple, maybe, like you been telling me, I am beautiful.”

* * *

CHAYNA

As the girls left class, they talked about what they were going to wear to the luncheon three days from now.

Miss Kedine told them they had to wear skirts or dresses and heels. Or at least nice flats.

One girl had borrowed her sister’s homecoming dress. Spring’s mom had bought her a new dress, purple and white and black – the first one she had owned since her dad died.

Chayna shuffled past her classmates, not saying a word. Miss Kedine stopped her in the hall. “How about you? Do you have your outfit ready?”

Chayna kicked the floor with her flip-flop. Her mother kept telling her she would give her money to go shopping. But she never did.

Miss Kedine squeezed Chayna’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll figure out something.”

She started to ask Chayna what size she wore, whether she needed shoes too. But the girl was already running to catch her bus.

Chayna Castro lives in public housing in a small, dark apartment on the edge of Haines City. Chayna moved in with her mom only a few months earlier. She hardly knew her.

She had grown up mostly with her dad and sisters. Her brother was in jail, and her older sister had quit high school and had a baby at 15 – Chayna’s age now.

Years earlier, while Chayna’s father was still working in the phosphate mines, they all shared a house and ate dinner together. Then her daddy got hurt at work.

They had to move into an apartment, then into a trailer, a motel, and the homes of relatives and friends. In 14 years, Chayna moved 15 times.

“My daddy just couldn’t get it together,” she said. He was frustrated, she said, and sometimes took it out on her.

“Mama was on drugs for a while. But she went to rehab. Daddy, I don’t know. I wanted to stay with him.”

She was in sixth grade when she got kicked out of middle school for fighting. The other girl was asking for it, she said.

They sent Chayna to an alternative school, but she got expelled.

About that time, her daddy started leaving her alone with her little sister. First for a few hours, then a night, then two or three days at a time.

Chayna, who was 12, said she would make macaroni and cheese, heat a can of beans, tell her 10-year-old sister, “Don’t worry. Daddy will be home soon.”

After a few months, her daddy put her and her younger sister on a bus and sent them to live with their mom.

They found the rooming house address their dad had given them. But their mom was gone. An aunt took them in, then handed them off to another relative.

Chayna got so angry and frustrated. Nobody wanted her. Finally, she slashed her aunt’s tires and wound up in foster care.

They stayed in strangers’ homes for six months or a year, Chayna can’t remember. She kept trying to kill herself: slashed her wrists, wrapped a radio cord around her neck, smothered herself with a pillow.

“I kept wanting to go home,” she said. Only she didn’t have one.

Finally, her dad came to get her. He sent her to PACE, where she learned she was three grade levels behind. When her mom got a subsidized apartment, she moved in with her.

She had been a student at PACE for more than a year, longer than she had ever lived in one place.

Now, she got up at 6 a.m. every weekday, walked a mile in the dark and rode three buses to get there – a 21/2-hour trip each way.

Two days before the luncheon, Miss Kedine called Chayna into her office. The girl immediately wondered again what she had done wrong.

“So, you ready?” asked the counselor, stepping from behind her desk. She grabbed the keys to the school van and walked toward the front door.
Z
Confused, Chayna followed. “Where we going?”

“We’re going shopping.”

Chayna hid her smile with her hands. She didn’t want Miss Kedine to see how excited she was.

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m not wearing no dress or no high heels.”

They pulled up outside a strip mall. Miss Kedine led the way to Marshalls. As they walked through the double doors, toward the first few racks of clothes, Chayna’s eyes got wide.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had gone shopping. She didn’t know what size she was or even what department she should be in. Girls? Juniors? Women’s?

Miss Kedine looked her over, trying to guess. Chayna’s T-shirts were so baggy you couldn’t tell if she was square or hourglass-shaped. “Let’s try a size 5,” Miss Kedine said. “Looks like you might already be in women’s.”

Chayna followed Miss Kedine through the aisles, looking all around, never stopping to pull out a dress.

Miss Kedine held out several – a flowered skirt, a sundress, one with short sleeves.

Each time, Chayna scrunched her nose and shook her head.

“You’re not even trying,” the counselor said. “Here.”

She started piling dresses into Chayna’s arms, short ones and long ones, prints and solids. On the top, she draped a black dress with a golden sash.

“Hey, that one’s cute,” Chayna said. “Look at the skirt . . . it’s all bubbly.”

She dropped the other options on the seat in the fitting room and pulled on the black dress. Miss Kedine tied the sash behind her.

“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” she said, turning Chayna in front of the mirror. “Who knew you had such a cute figure?”

“I feel naked,” Chayna said into her fingers. But when she looked up and saw herself, she just stared. She had never seen herself in a dress, never dreamed she could look like such a lady.

“Now, we just need to get you some shoes,” said Miss Kedine, helping her unzip the dress. “You said they had to be flats, right?”

“Well, I never walked in heels before,” Chayna said.

“Then now is the time.”

The counselor picked out low heels first, but Chayna wanted something spikier – like Miss Kedine’s – so they settled on a pair of strappy black stilettos.

“I feel fake,” Chayna said, wobbling down the aisle. “Like it’s not me.”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Miss Kedine. “Just look at you!”

“Thank you, Miss Kedine!” Chayna cried, taking off the shoes and cradling her new clothes. She kept unfolding the dress to look at it. “Oh, thank you.”

Miss Kedine gave the clerk her charge card. The total came to $69.52; she would pay for this out of her own pocket.

At the subsidized apartment Chayna shared with her mom, that much money would cover a month’s rent.

Chayna’s mom was already there when she got home that afternoon.

“How was work?” Chayna asked, heading for her bedroom, swinging the Marshalls bag on her arm.

“Actually not too bad today,” said Chayna’s mom, Kathy Young, 47. “What you got there?”

Chayna had told her mom about etiquette class, about how they were learning to do facials and sit straight. But she didn’t want to spoil the surprise about the dress.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Chayna spent a couple of minutes behind her closed door, then re-emerged.

“Do you like?” she asked, twirling down the narrow hall. The gold bow was crooked behind her back. She teetered in her heels.

Chayna’s mom was sitting on the couch with her back to her daughter. When she turned and saw her, she gasped. Then she collapsed, sobbing.

“Oh my God, giiirl! Oh my God, I got chill bumps!”

You’re so pretty, Chayna’s mother told her. So grown.

“I wish I could be there to see you at the luncheon,” she said, wiping tears.

She had never been to one of Chayna’s school events. And she had never been to a luncheon.

* * *
SPRING

For the fourth class, Miss Kedine brought in a big cardboard box. She set it on the long table in front of the lunchroom and greeted her girls.

Another student had been kicked out for fighting. Seven of the original 10 remained.

“Today you’re going to get to do place settings,” Miss Kedine said, bouncing a bit in her high heels. “I brought us all sorts of plates and cups and silverware.”

She reached into the box and began unloading foam dishes and plastic utensils. The school couldn’t afford china or flatware, so these items would have to do.

The utensils had colored dots on them, each one carefully applied by Miss Kedine herself. She handed out a printed guide to the colors. The fork with the red sticker was the dinner fork. The orange one was the seafood fork. Green was salad, yellow, cake.

The forks and plates and so forth were to be arranged according to a guide to holiday entertaining that Miss Kedine had printed from the Internet.

“Four forks?” Lindsey laughed. “Who needs four forks?” Her hair was ash blond now, with walnut streaks.

“You’ll get four forks when we go out for our luncheon. And you’ll need to know which one to use for what,” Miss Kedine said. “Haven’t any of you ever set a table?”

Chayna yawned. “I saw someone do that on TV one time. I didn’t get it.” Most of Chayna’s diet – burgers, chicken nuggets and fries her mom brought home from her job at McDonald’s – required no silverware.

Miss Kedine just shook her head. “Okay, girls, now come on up and get your place settings.”

In the back of the room, Spring sat alone. As usual. When the other girls came forward, she didn’t move. She just stared at the diagram, breathing hard, her hands shaking.

“Spring, you okay?” asked the counselor. All the girls turned to look. Spring covered her face with her sweaty hands. “Spring?”

Miss Kedine crossed the room, put her hand on Spring’s shoulder, rubbed her back.

“It is a lot, isn’t it? So many things to remember,” the counselor said. Spring started sobbing. “It’s okay. We’ll all help you. You still have a month. You can practice at home.”

The girl took her hands from her face, looked up at Miss Kedine. “You don’t understand,” she sighed.

“At my house we don’t even have four forks.”

Spring Waterloo could always feel the panic coming, small waves building to big. Whenever she was overwhelmed or scared, she had attacks. Her body would go numb. Her face melted into a blank mask.

It feels, she said, like someone is pressing a heavy board on your chest and you can’t gulp enough air. It looks all wavy, like seeing everything in a fun house mirror. It sounds as if you’re underwater, everything all muffled and far away. It tastes like bile.

Miss Kedine had been working with Spring for months, even before this class started, trying to calm her. She felt she knew Spring’s story, why she suffered.

Spring didn’t think Miss Kedine could understand. The counselor was too pretty; everybody loved her.

What if you weren’t like that? What if you hated your body, your face, even your stupid smile? What if your brother was smart and your sister was popular and your mom worked long hours and was always stressed and your daddy was the only one who really loved you – but then he died?

“How would you feel,” Spring asked, “if that was you?”

She was 11 when her father had the heart attack. Spring remembers lying on the living room floor, watching Jerry Springer, calling her dad’s cell phone to see why he hadn’t come home. When her mother finally showed up with her brother and sister, everyone knew but her.

She wore a flowered dress to the funeral. She hadn’t worn a dress since.

Over the next few years, she moved a dozen times. “We were always getting kicked out of places,” she said. “Mostly we just couldn’t make the rent.”

By the time Spring got to Lakeland High, she was having panic attacks every day. She would be walking down the hall, daydreaming in math class, or standing in line in the cafeteria, and she’d just freak out. The second semester of ninth grade, she stopped going to school. Stopped going anywhere.

She got so scared of being alone, she wouldn’t even take a shower. She was 14, and her mom had to bathe her.

She would sit in her room all day, using a razor blade to carve long, thin slices into her thighs. The feeling of warm blood trickling down her legs was like a drug, she said, “like I was blocking out all the other hurt and releasing happiness. Or something.”

Did she want to kill herself? “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t really care.”

A private counselor suggested PACE and spent months convincing Spring that she could cope there. She finally enrolled in April 2009. And though the attacks came less frequently, they were just as strong.

She sat by herself at school, barely talked in class, never ate the free lunch. She wouldn’t let anyone see her eat.

“Who wants to see a fat girl stuff her face?”

Spring’s brother and sister were grown and gone. She lived with her mom, a paralegal, and her mom’s boyfriend, “who sells cars or something.”

When her mom had enough money to put gas in her van, she picked Spring up from school. Otherwise, Spring got a bus pass from one of the teachers and rode a couple of miles to her lonely duplex.

Laundry filled the living room – jeans and T-shirts wadded on the sofa, sweats and underwear spilling across the floor. Spring couldn’t remember what was clean, what was dirty. The only table, in a corner that was meant to be a dining room, ached under weeks of newspapers, a CD player and a box of panty liners.

Spring and her mom never ate at the table. They almost never ate together at all.

Sometimes, when there was food, Spring would make herself a frozen pizza or waffle and eat sitting on her bed. Sometimes her mom would bring home a Publix sub. Sometimes Spring went hungry. She stashed packages of ramen noodles under her bed.

In her best moments she imagined a different future. She hoped to get a job at Publix, or maybe Winn-Dixie. She would start jogging and finish high school and maybe even go to college. Someday, she hoped, she would be a model, like Miss Kedine.

Each week in class, the counselor reiterated the finer points of table-setting.

She set the plastic foam cups before the girls, helped them position the plasticware. Start with the outside utensil, she told them, and work your way in.

She showed her students how to eat soup: “Scoop the spoon away from you; don’t slurp.” How to break off a bite of bread and butter that instead of spackling the whole slice. How to unfold their napkins, place them on their laps, and dab at their lips instead of wiping.

“And when you’re cutting meat, you don’t cut up the whole thing before you start eating,” said Miss Kedine. “You cut a single bite, then eat that.”

“Man, you should’ve brought us steak so we could practice!” Lindsey said.

“Well, I didn’t bring steak,” said Miss Kedine, reaching into the big box. “But I brought chicken.”

Spring got scared. Was Miss Kedine going to make her eat in front of everyone?

The counselor pulled out squares of paper. The school couldn’t afford real meat. So the girls had to practice on paper chicken.

The lessons continued: Hair care and color. Manicures and nail polish. Walking in high heels.

As the weeks passed, Miss Kedine showed the girls how to trim their cuticles, slide on a pair of stockings, use oatmeal to make a cleansing mask. She gave the girls facials. None of them had ever had a facial.

Miss Kedine saw the girls growing less resistant. They made fewer snide comments, didn’t slouch as much. Sometimes they stopped by her office to borrow deodorant.

Two days before Thanksgiving, she canceled class. PACE teachers went to Publix and bought turkey and stuffing, corn bread and cranberry sauce, and served a feast in the lunchroom.

Miss Kedine couldn’t wait for her girls to show off their new manners. “Okay, everyone bring a plate up here and help yourselves,” she called.

She smiled as her girls placed paper napkins in their laps. Nodded approvingly as they cut one bite of turkey at a time.

But when dessert arrived, etiquette excused itself and left the room.

A girl picked up the whipped cream and squirted it into her mouth. Another smeared some across Chayna’s face. Someone flung banana pudding across the room and shouted, “Food fight!”

In the back of the room, Spring licked the frosting off an orange cupcake. It was the first time anyone had seen her eat.

On the eighth Tuesday, a tall girl strode into class, sporting long, scarlet nails, a hint of gloss shimmering on her lips.

“Oooh, look at Spring!” someone shouted. Her hair was mahogany now, with thick auburn highlights, tied with a white ribbon.

“Don’t you look nice,” said Miss Kedine. Blushing, Spring slid into her seat. But her hands didn’t sweat, her stomach didn’t clench. A month had gone by since she’d had a panic attack.

“I’m so glad you ladies are here. You know, this is our last class,” said Miss Kedine. The girls groaned. The teenagers who had hated the idea of etiquette class now didn’t want it to end.

“You all learned so much. You ladies surprised me,” said Miss Kedine. “Now, let’s go over what we have learned.”

On the first day of class, the counselor had asked the girls about self-esteem. Lindsey liked herself, was proud of her independence. Chayna said she was “working on it.” Back then, Spring wouldn’t even look in the mirror.

“So where are you all today?” Miss Kedine asked. “Has anything changed?”

One girl said she felt fancy now, because she knew what rich people knew. Another said she was ready to meet the queen.

Spring crossed her ankles, combed back her hair with her fake nails.

“Okay, I’m about to be really honest with y’all here,” she said. She glanced around the room at the faces of her new friends, then locked eyes with Miss Kedine.

“I’ve been working on this. You’ve helped me see it, some,” she said, touching her forehead. “I guess, except for this pimple, maybe, like you been telling me, I am beautiful.”

* * *

CHAYNA

As the girls left class, they talked about what they were going to wear to the luncheon three days from now.

Miss Kedine told them they had to wear skirts or dresses and heels. Or at least nice flats.

One girl had borrowed her sister’s homecoming dress. Spring’s mom had bought her a new dress, purple and white and black – the first one she had owned since her dad died.

Chayna shuffled past her classmates, not saying a word. Miss Kedine stopped her in the hall. “How about you? Do you have your outfit ready?”

Chayna kicked the floor with her flip-flop. Her mother kept telling her she would give her money to go shopping. But she never did.

Miss Kedine squeezed Chayna’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll figure out something.”

She started to ask Chayna what size she wore, whether she needed shoes too. But the girl was already running to catch her bus.

Chayna Castro lives in public housing in a small, dark apartment on the edge of Haines City. Chayna moved in with her mom only a few months earlier. She hardly knew her.

She had grown up mostly with her dad and sisters. Her brother was in jail, and her older sister had quit high school and had a baby at 15 – Chayna’s age now.

Years earlier, while Chayna’s father was still working in the phosphate mines, they all shared a house and ate dinner together. Then her daddy got hurt at work.

They had to move into an apartment, then into a trailer, a motel, and the homes of relatives and friends. In 14 years, Chayna moved 15 times.

“My daddy just couldn’t get it together,” she said. He was frustrated, she said, and sometimes took it out on her.

“Mama was on drugs for a while. But she went to rehab. Daddy, I don’t know. I wanted to stay with him.”

She was in sixth grade when she got kicked out of middle school for fighting. The other girl was asking for it, she said.

They sent Chayna to an alternative school, but she got expelled.

About that time, her daddy started leaving her alone with her little sister. First for a few hours, then a night, then two or three days at a time.

Chayna, who was 12, said she would make macaroni and cheese, heat a can of beans, tell her 10-year-old sister, “Don’t worry. Daddy will be home soon.”

After a few months, her daddy put her and her younger sister on a bus and sent them to live with their mom.

They found the rooming house address their dad had given them. But their mom was gone. An aunt took them in, then handed them off to another relative.

Chayna got so angry and frustrated. Nobody wanted her. Finally, she slashed her aunt’s tires and wound up in foster care.

They stayed in strangers’ homes for six months or a year, Chayna can’t remember. She kept trying to kill herself: slashed her wrists, wrapped a radio cord around her neck, smothered herself with a pillow.

“I kept wanting to go home,” she said. Only she didn’t have one.

Finally, her dad came to get her. He sent her to PACE, where she learned she was three grade levels behind. When her mom got a subsidized apartment, she moved in with her.

She had been a student at PACE for more than a year, longer than she had ever lived in one place.

Now, she got up at 6 a.m. every weekday, walked a mile in the dark and rode three buses to get there – a 21/2-hour trip each way.

Two days before the luncheon, Miss Kedine called Chayna into her office. The girl immediately wondered again what she had done wrong.

“So, you ready?” asked the counselor, stepping from behind her desk. She grabbed the keys to the school van and walked toward the front door.

Confused, Chayna followed. “Where we going?”

“We’re going shopping.”

Chayna hid her smile with her hands. She didn’t want Miss Kedine to see how excited she was.

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m not wearing no dress or no high heels.”

They pulled up outside a strip mall. Miss Kedine led the way to Marshalls. As they walked through the double doors, toward the first few racks of clothes, Chayna’s eyes got wide.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had gone shopping. She didn’t know what size she was or even what department she should be in. Girls? Juniors? Women’s?

Miss Kedine looked her over, trying to guess. Chayna’s T-shirts were so baggy you couldn’t tell if she was square or hourglass-shaped. “Let’s try a size 5,” Miss Kedine said. “Looks like you might already be in women’s.”

Chayna followed Miss Kedine through the aisles, looking all around, never stopping to pull out a dress.

Miss Kedine held out several – a flowered skirt, a sundress, one with short sleeves.

Each time, Chayna scrunched her nose and shook her head.

“You’re not even trying,” the counselor said. “Here.”

She started piling dresses into Chayna’s arms, short ones and long ones, prints and solids. On the top, she draped a black dress with a golden sash.

“Hey, that one’s cute,” Chayna said. “Look at the skirt . . . it’s all bubbly.”

She dropped the other options on the seat in the fitting room and pulled on the black dress. Miss Kedine tied the sash behind her.

“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” she said, turning Chayna in front of the mirror. “Who knew you had such a cute figure?”

“I feel naked,” Chayna said into her fingers. But when she looked up and saw herself, she just stared. She had never seen herself in a dress, never dreamed she could look like such a lady.

“Now, we just need to get you some shoes,” said Miss Kedine, helping her unzip the dress. “You said they had to be flats, right?”

“Well, I never walked in heels before,” Chayna said.

“Then now is the time.”

The counselor picked out low heels first, but Chayna wanted something spikier – like Miss Kedine’s – so they settled on a pair of strappy black stilettos.

“I feel fake,” Chayna said, wobbling down the aisle. “Like it’s not me.”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Miss Kedine. “Just look at you!”

“Thank you, Miss Kedine!” Chayna cried, taking off the shoes and cradling her new clothes. She kept unfolding the dress to look at it. “Oh, thank you.”

Miss Kedine gave the clerk her charge card. The total came to $69.52; she would pay for this out of her own pocket.

At the subsidized apartment Chayna shared with her mom, that much money would cover a month’s rent.

Chayna’s mom was already there when she got home that afternoon.

“How was work?” Chayna asked, heading for her bedroom, swinging the Marshalls bag on her arm.

“Actually not too bad today,” said Chayna’s mom, Kathy Young, 47. “What you got there?”

Chayna had told her mom about etiquette class, about how they were learning to do facials and sit straight. But she didn’t want to spoil the surprise about the dress.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Chayna spent a couple of minutes behind her closed door, then re-emerged.

“Do you like?” she asked, twirling down the narrow hall. The gold bow was crooked behind her back. She teetered in her heels.

Chayna’s mom was sitting on the couch with her back to her daughter. When she turned and saw her, she gasped. Then she collapsed, sobbing.

“Oh my God, giiirl! Oh my God, I got chill bumps!”

You’re so pretty, Chayna’s mother told her. So grown.

“I wish I could be there to see you at the luncheon,” she said, wiping tears.

She had never been to one of Chayna’s school events. And she had never been to a luncheon.

* * *

FINAL EXAMPLES

Some girls celebrate their emergence into the adult world with a cotillion or a coming out party. For others it’s a quinceanera, bat mitzvah or sweet 16. For the students in Miss Kedine’s etiquette class, their proving party was lunch at a cafe overlooking the lake.

They had been working toward this for eight weeks, dreading it at times. But not now. They saw it as a chance to make Miss Kedine proud, to debut their new, grownup selves.

“Okay, ladies, let’s get going. You only have an hour here to get ready,” Miss Kedine called, leading them into the PACE conference room that Friday. “Anyone need help with hair or makeup?”

The girls weren’t listening. They were too busy ogling each other’s dresses and shoes.

“Oooh, Chayna, that’s so fine,” one girl said as Chayna pulled the black dress from her backpack. Chayna looked angry: hands clenched, jaw set, like she might haul off and hit the girl. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Chayna kicked off her flip-flops, stomped into her high heels. “Broke up with my boyfriend on the bus this morning,” she said. “He weren’t treating me right, and I know better now.” She pranced around, practicing her posture. “Hey, I got this,” she said, suddenly sounding proud. “Only, heels hurt.”

“I didn’t bring no high heels,” said Spring, shuffling by in dirty flip-flops.

Miss Kedine planted her hands on her hips. “I said no flip-flops.”

“I don’t have no other shoes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” snapped Miss Kedine. She marched into the hall, smoothed her skirt, then her hair, took two deep breaths and got out her key ring. The teachers kept rewards for the girls in a glass case in the front hall. Perfume and hair clips and rhinestone sandals.

“What size?” asked Miss Kedine, opening the case.

“I don’t know.”

So Miss Kedine took one of Spring’s flip-flops and held it up to the new shoes until she found the right size. Spring’s Cinderella moment.

Heading back into the conference room, Miss Kedine looked over her girls. Someone was helping Chayna with her hair. Someone else was spritzing on body spray. Another had left the class. But where was Lindsey?

No one had seen her. A couple of girls had called her cell phone, but it was dead. Lindsey had promised she would be there for the luncheon. It was the last thing she had to do to graduate. How could she miss this?

Miss Kedine asked another teacher to look after the class. She drove a few blocks to Lindsey’s uncle’s house, the last place she had heard Lindsey was staying.

The front window on the little green house was broken. Someone had taped cardboard over the hole. Lindsey’s old red Camaro was parked out front.

Miss Kedine knocked on the door. “Come in,” someone called. So she walked down the hall, calling, “Hello, I’m Lindsey’s counselor . . .” In the first bedroom on the left, she found Lindsey, fast asleep, her face blanketed by her hair, which was now brown.

“You’ve got five minutes,” said Miss Kedine.

Sitting up slowly, Lindsey rubbed her eyes. “I don’t have a dress.”

They pulled out of the PACE parking lot 20 minutes later, six would-be ladies, their counselor and principal.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey told everyone. She had worked late, come back and cleaned her uncle’s house, then got into a fight with her mom and slept through the alarm. After Miss Kedine woke her, she stopped by a friend’s house to borrow a turquoise dress.

Soon they pulled into the parking lot of Zorah’s restaurant. “Okay, ladies,” Miss Kedine called into the rearview mirror. “Remember your manners.”

“You girls all look so gorgeous,” said Ms. DeLoach, the principal.

As Spring walked up the path, she started breathing hard. Lindsey watched a scarlet rash creep up Spring’s neck, spread across her face. She saw Spring’s lower lip begin to tremble.

“You okay?”

“Scared.”

“It’ll be okay,” Lindsey said, squeezing Spring’s elbow. “I got your back.”

All the girls froze when they walked inside. The restaurant had been a waterfront residence, and was still homey and elegant, like a scene from one of Miss Kedine’s magazines. Lace curtains kissed the wide windows. A fire licked at the hearth. And on every table, a scarlet poinsettia.

The hostess led them to a private dining room in the back, where a wall of windows overlooked the sun-striped lake.

“Okay, ladies, let’s take our seats,” said Miss Kedine. They pulled out their own chairs, slid into their seats, crossed their ankles. Chayna planted her elbows on the table, then remembered.

She touched the edge of the chocolate-colored tablecloth, then lifted the corner of the snowy one laid diagonally across it. “This two tablecloths here?” she asked. “This a tablecloth too, right?” Miss Kedine nodded. “Wow,” Chayna breathed. “I never even been anywhere with one.”

What’s a butter dish? What’s tomato bisque? What’s hummus?

They regarded the nine utensils and three plates with the caution of bomb defusers. They didn’t dare touch the black fabric blooming from their crystal water glasses. “Ladies,” Miss Kedine said gently, “remember, napkins in our laps.”

Spring fingered the carefully folded cloth, seeming confused. “This is our napkin?”

They didn’t know what vinaigrette was. Of six dressing choices, they all ordered ranch. “Like the sauce for McNuggets?” asked Chayna. Lindsey poked a piece of red pepper, held it up and asked Miss Kedine, “What’s this? Some sort of fancy tomato?” She thought all peppers were green.

About 45 minutes after they arrived, while the girls were still picking at their salads, Spring leaned into Lindsey and said, “This meal’s taking forever. Ramen noodles be ready in, like, three minutes.”

Then, the disaster Spring had dreaded.

She stabbed at a crouton. It sailed off her plate and plopped onto the tablecloth. Her face went blank as she confronted the evidence: Who did she think she was, pretending she could fit in somewhere like this?

Stomach tightening, she sank into her chair and buried her face in her clammy hands.

“It’s okay,” Lindsey laughed quietly. “I told you, I got your back.” She jabbed her own fork into a piece of lettuce and flicked it onto the table.

The girls were quiet during most of the meal. You could hear ice clinking in lemonade glasses, knives scraping plates. “You can talk, you know,” Miss Kedine encouraged them.

No, they really couldn’t. To do this right, they needed the focus of a surgeon.

Cutting real chicken was the hardest part. The plastic knives and paper poultry hadn’t prepared them. “You should have at least gotten us Play-Doh chicken to practice,” someone told Miss Kedine.

The counselor corrected the girls, gently, when one held her fork in her fist, when another buttered a whole slice of bread at once, when Chayna left her spoon in her soup bowl instead of setting it on the saucer. Miss Kedine nodded when they sat up straight and dabbed at their mouths.

When the chocolate pie and strawberries were served, Miss Kedine clinked her spoon on her glass and said, “Ladies! I’m so thrilled with you all.” She beamed at her students, at their transformation. “Now I don’t expect you all to remember everything. But if you take even one thing with you from this, as you enter the world, I know it will make a difference.”

They had just finished lunch, were folding linen napkins in their laps, when Miss Kedine stood and addressed them again.

“Will the following girls please step forward to receive their certificates of completion . . .”

One by one, the students rose to accept their awards.

The girl who had been on her own since she was 14, who worked 30 hours a week and kept her dead friend’s picture in her car. The girl who lost her daddy, who used to cut herself, who couldn’t look in a mirror. The girl who had moved 15 times, who had been so sullen and angry, whose own mother hadn’t seen her in a dress, hadn’t known she was beautiful.

“Lindsey,” the counselor called. “Spring.” She named the other three girls, who all stood up beside the table. “And Chayna.”

They held their paper diplomas in front of them. “I’m hanging this in my room,” Chayna whispered.

When the girls started the etiquette class, they thought they would simply learn how to use a napkin and where to place a salad fork. If they knew how to walk in heels and shake hands properly, their teacher had told them, the world would see them differently.

But it turned out that Miss Kedine’s class had accomplished much more: It had changed the way the girls saw themselves. Understanding how to behave, they gained confidence, began to think they were worthy, started aspiring to lives they never thought possible.

This wasn’t about salad forks or crossing your ankles or saying “Please.” It was about knowing you belong. Believing you can make it out there.

With their principal and Miss Kedine between them, the girls posed for a picture. Then, suddenly, it was over. Everyone piled into the PACE van, and the counselor hurried them back to school.

Lindsey had to get to her new job. Spring’s mom had promised to drive her home, so she could see her dressed up. And Chayna had to catch her bus. She still had that 21/2-hour trip ahead of her.

“Thank you, Miss Kedine,” Chayna shouted, waving as she crossed the school parking lot. She wore her purple backpack over the golden bow on her dress, a girl and a woman at the same time. In her hand, she carried a plastic bag with her old jeans and her new certificate, the only award she had ever received.

“Hey!” called Miss Kedine, seeing her in her nice clothes, “aren’t you going to change?”

Shaking her head, Chayna climbed onto the bus in her new high heels.

She already had.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

* * *
Etiquette 101

On the first day of etiquette class, Kedine Johns gave her students a quiz. Here it is:

1. Double dipping: When eating chips with dip, is it okay to dip, take a bite, and return for more dip with the same chip?

– Yes

– No

2. When talking with friends, family, it’s not necessary to say, “Please” and “Thank you.”

– True

– False

3. You’re over at a friend’s house for dinner and are served a dish you’ve never had or seen before. What do you do?

– Make a face and poke it with your fork.

– Wait until the host looks away and give it to the family dog.

– Say something like, “Thank you, I love new foods. I’ve never had this before, and I can’t wait to try it.”

4. After you’ve received a birthday gift it is proper to send a “Thank you” note. How soon should you write it?

– Within 24 hours of receiving the gift.

– Within a month.

– Any time before your next birthday.

* * *

ETIQUETTE 101: TIPS FOR TABLE MANNERS

EXCERPTS FROM HANDOUTS MISS KEDINE PASSED OUT IN CLASS APPEAR THROUGHOUT THE SECTION

POSTURE

Elbows, elbows, if you’re able — keep your elbows off the table! Proper posture at the table is very important. Sit up straight, with your arms held near your body. You should neither lean on the back of the chair nor bend forward to place the elbows on the table. It is permissible to lean forward slightly every now and then and press the elbows very lightly against the edge of the table.

“PLEASE PASS THE SALT”

The proper response to this very simple sounding request is to pick up BOTH the salt and pepper and to place them on the table within reach of the person next to you, who will do the same, and so on, until they reach the person who asked for them. They are not passed hand-to-hand, nor should anyone other than the original requester sprinkle her food when she has the shakers in her possession.

EATING SOUP

Dip the spoon into the soup, moving it away from the body, until it is about two-thirds full, then sip the liquid (without slurping) from the side of the spoon (without inserting the whole bowl of the spoon into the mouth). The theory behind this is that a diner who scoops the spoon toward himself is more likely to slosh soup onto his lap, although it is difficult to imagine what sort of eater would stroke the spoon so forcefully through the liquid that he creates waves. It is perfectly fine to tilt the bowl slightly — again away from the body — to get the last spoonful or two of soup.

BREAD

Bread must always be broken, never cut with a knife. Tear off a piece that is no bigger than two bites worth and eat that before tearing off another. If butter is provided (and at formal events it customarily is not), butter the small piece just before eating it. There is an exception to this rule: If you are served a hot roll, it is permissible to tear (not cut) the whole roll lengthwise down the middle.

HOLDING A UTENSIL

In general use, both spoon and fork are held horizontally by balancing them between the first knuckle of the middle finger and the tip of the index finger while the thumb steadies the handle. The knife is used with the tip of the index finger gently pressing out over the top of the blade to guide as you cut.

REMOVING INEDIBLE ITEMS FROM THE MOUTH

The general rule for removing food from your mouth is that it should go out the same way it went in. Therefore, olive pits can be delicately dropped onto an open palm before putting them onto your plate, and a piece of bone discovered in a bite of chicken should be returned to the plate by way of the fork. Fish is an exception to the rule. It is fine to remove the tiny bones with your fingers, since they would be difficult to drop from your mouth onto the fork. If what you have to spit out will be terrifically ugly . . . it will be necessary to surreptitiously spit it into your napkin, so that you can keep it out of sight.

* * *
ABOUT THE STORY

Staff writer Lane DeGregory and photographer Kathleen Flynn spent two months observing etiquette classes at the PACE Center for Girls in Lakeland. With the school’s permission, they followed the girls and their counselor.

DeGregory and Flynn witnessed most of the events described in this story. By necessity, some scenes were reconstructed. The description of Lindsey’s job interview is based on her recollection, and the scene about Miss Kedine waking Lindsey for the luncheon is based on interviews with both of them.

DeGregory, 43, joined the St. Petersburg Times* in 2000. In 2009, she won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Girl in the Window,” a story about a severely neglected girl. DeGregory can be reached at degregory@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8825.

Flynn, 32, has been with the newspaper since 2002. She can be reached at kflynn@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8049.

*The St. Petersburg Times has since changed its name to The Tampa Bay Times.

Walter Learning died this week. The Newfoundlander who founded and directed Theatre New Brunswick’s first years was part of a group who made the1970s and 1980s a golden era in New Brunswick culture. Alden Nowlan, Leo Ferrari, Miramichiers Ray Fraser, David Adams Richards, and Jim Stewart and Premier Richard Hatfield were the principals.
Individually and collectively they amazed, outraged, entertained and focussed more national and international attention on New Brunswick than ever before.
Leo Ferrari was the St. Thomas professor who founded the Flat Earth Society. Members had titles. Alden Nowlan was the official court fool.
Meetings began with Leo stating, “The earth is flat as any fool can plainly see.”
At that point, Alden would rise and say, “I can see that.”
They concocted another stunt to introduce women to the shy Jim Stewart. They issued a statement that Jim was the direct descendant of Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded by Queen Elizabeth I. That attracted media attention around the world. There is a photograph of them planting a flag on, I think, Miramichi’s Bay du Vin Island and claiming the throne for King Jim. I think the plan worked. Jim did not become King of England but he did marry Jane.
Walter and Alden co-wrote plays performed by TNB. They included “Dollar Woman,” about how destitute people were reverse Dutch auctioned off in the 19th century in New Brunswick. People bid down to a price the province would pay them to provide a home for a poor person. A healthy, attractive young woman could go for as little as a dollar.
Alden and Walter also carried on a fake feud in the Telegraph Journal. Alden would insult Walter in his column. Walter would respond. Always attracted to a fight, people followed their exchanges providing publicity for their cause of the day.
A thing that really endeared Walter to me was that he often included an Atlantic author’s work in the touring TNB season. We saw plays like, “Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance,” about a fishing community confronting a collapse of a fishery.
Theatre New Brunswick’s first production of Godspell packed every house and had to be extended after an Anglican minister in Dalhousie tried to organize a boycott of the production, “portraying Jesus as a clown.” A final performance was arranged in, Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton. It was so packed the wall were lined and people were cross-legged on the floor. At the end, a spotlight moved from the actor Jesus crucified to the crucifix on the church wall. I don’t remember a more powerful moment in theatre.
Premier Richard Hatfield was the perfect political leader for the time. He embraced the gang and hosted parties of his own that were legendary and in tune with the gang’s joie de vie.
At the time, all the very best actors in Canada came to perform for TNB. Douglas Campbell, Ted Follows, Henry Beckman and many others were repeat performers.
Being a native Newfoundlander, Walter’s natural tendencies made him a great fit for Miramichiers. It was a sign of the significance of the theatre to Miramichiers when people were arguing about productions like “Mass Appeal,” the days after a show here. Miramichiers were a favourite audience.
Walter went on to other successes but his time with the gang in Fredericton left me memories that confirm W.O. Mitchell’s statement that “The arts are not a luxury. They’re how we know we are not alone.”
DAC