I’ll never forget the day in third grade when everyone was sent home with a red envelope. In my elementary school, the EOG, AKA End-Of-Grade test, was the biggest exam of the year. A whole day or two was dedicated to spending eight hours at your desk with two #2 pencils and a packet comprised the whole year’s reading and math studies.
Little kids didn’t get the test. Starting in third grade, you had to be prepared for this, and many students were anxious to pass so we could each make it to the next grade.
It was the day before the EOG’s and the classroom was a bustle of students grabbing backpacks and talking to friends. Me and Arli, my best friend at the time, sat in the right corner of the room playing with little pony figurines. Everyone was waiting for the intercom to blare out our bus names so we could go home. Mrs. Daniels, our teacher, told us to listen up and set bright red envelopes on each of our desks. Now, being a younger teacher, Ms. Daniels was typically laid-back. She loved to joke around and let us listen to Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars at the end of a long school day. But that day she was unusually strict. She instructed each of us that we could not read or even open these envelopes at any time. They were for our parents' eyes only. We were to take them home and get our parents' signatures to bring back to school tomorrow.
None of us knew what these envelopes were for or why they were so important, but slipped them into our backpacks and went about our day.
That night, I showed my mother the envelope while she was making dinner and watching my little brother. She didn’t say a word about it the whole evening, not when Dad came home, not when we ate dinner, not even before I went to bed.
The next morning, she gave me the envelope back, and I headed to school.
That morning the class was antsy. Everyone was chatting about the test, or a light topic to ease the stress of it. Honestly I never really let the stress of tests get to me and I felt fine.
Arli was very worried about the envelope. She thought we had all gotten in big trouble when the envelopes had been passed out, and was scared when her parents had stayed silent about it.
I voiced that mine had too, but that was all I could get out before Ms. Daniels walked in. She marched straight to the front of the room and wasted no time with her announcement.
“Okay everyone, grab your envelope from your backpack and then go straight back to your desks!”
It was a mess of children going to the cubbies to the right of the room and pulling out the envelopes. Once we were all seated, hearts racing, she looked at each of us and said, “Open your envelopes!”
We did as told, and a chorus of ripping and peeling ensued. When I tore open the bright red paper, I pulled out and unfolded a letter with my Mom’s handwriting, in blue pen.
It was a letter explaining how much she loved me and how she knew I would pass the EOG. I was shocked. And at the end, in sloppier, stick-like handwriting, was a message from my Dad. I particularly remember his part saying, “Pass or fail, we still love you.” I was so flattered I didn’t have any words. I looked around at other students, who were lost in the writings of their own letters. Some kids’ mouth moved along with the words they read, and others were smiling like they’d been given a piece of candy. Arli’s jaw hung just over her shirt collar the entire time.
To this day, I don’t know if Ms. Daniels had set up the letter idea, or if the school did, but it filled me with so much joy, that even now as an adult, I still remember that day. I don’t remember a lick about that test. But I still remember the moment I tore open that red envelope to see that letter in blue writing.
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