THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996                   TAG: 9605190035
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Column 
SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   65 lines

BEING HELPFUL TO TAYLOR WAS WHAT WAS IMPORTANT

Remember when the teacher handed out tests in school and told you there were no right or wrong answers?

I used to hate those. There had to be a right answer. Why else was I taking the test?

I had a flashback to those days last week.

There I was, standing in the principal's office, no less, sweating out another one of those dreaded no-wrong-answer tests.

Only this questionnaire was about my daughter, who's going to start her odyssey through the education system this fall: kindergarten.

These are the kinds of questions the school wanted answers to in advance:

Is she shy? Or is she outgoing?

Is she quiet? Or active?

Is she easygoing? Or difficult?

Is she sensitive? Or rowdy?

I wonder, I thought, what moment of the day they are speaking of?

As usual, there was no room to explain that she's grumpy and quiet and difficult when she gets up, outgoing and happy by midmorning, and alternately whiny, whimsical, crabby, happy, active, slothlike and delightful during the day.

Not that I would have admitted that anyway. Because I found myself falling back into my high school thinking mode: What was the right answer?

There had to be a right answer, I kept thinking every time my No. 2 pencil hovered over the little yes-no boxes.

Now if I say she's quiet, would that mark her for life? Would she be labeled ``Quiet.'' Doomed to spend her school career as a wallflower? Would she be pushed to the back of the room, hopelessly lost in a mass of aggressive classmates whose savvy parents had marked ``outgoing''?

But if I put ``outgoing,'' would the teachers not make the effort to draw her out? Would they pass over her, not realizing she needs to be coaxed a bit? Would she be forgotten?

I was starting to get those feelings I used to get during final exams. The clammy hands. The churning stomach. The beads of sweat on the forehead.

I could see the principal looking at me. Hear the clock ticking. And that smell of milk cartons, construction paper and Elmer's glue was starting to make me dizzy.

So I picked what I thought were the ``right'' answers: Bright. Smart. Outgoing. Active. Let's see, where's the ``Rhodes Scholar waiting to happen'' box?

There. That should get her off to the right start.

You can hardly blame me. One moment my daughter's in an environment where she hung the moon, where she can do no wrong, where everything she does is top of the chart.

And the next, she's part of a mass of humanity that's judged, compared, labeled, analyzed and categorized. A place where she's a spot on the Bell curve, where she'll have - dare I say it? - a permanent record.

Well, I had to make the first sheet in her file impressive.

So what happens on the first day of school when the teacher finds out that my daughter is sometimes shy, frequently quiet, and occasionally doesn't get it?

She'll realize that Taylor's mother sometimes lies shamelessly, that's what. by CNB