“A Clean Slate”

• Scriptural Reference: Luke 7:36-8:3
• June 17, 2007

I can still see it: Donna Moore standing outside the third grade classroom banging erasers together. You know what I’m talking about? Mrs. Smith had given Donna the erasers from the blackboard and told her to go out and clean them. Mrs. Smith had attempted to illustrate some lesson on the blackboard and had erased the numbers and all it had done was leave a white smear. So, she asked Donna to go out and slam the erasers together to violently knock out excess chalk. And there Donna stood, in the afternoon light, white dust billowing out in a cloud and being swept away in a breeze that rustled the leaves on the pin oaks lining Monroe Road. But when she came in, the erasers worked better and Mrs. Smith was happy with the nice, clean blackboard.

Then one day, Mrs. Smith broke down and sent Jimmy Taylor to get a special rag from the janitor. When Jimmy came back, he held a thick towel in one hand while he held his nose with the other. A sharp Lysol-like smell filled the room and caused the eyes to water of the kids sitting in the front desks. Mrs. Smith took the rag from Jimmy and Jimmy returned to his desk, rubbing his eyes and wiping his hand on his shirt. (Poor guy smelled like Lysol at recess and no one picked him to be on their kickball team.) Then Mrs. Smith wiped the rag across the blackboard and this time, even the faintest trace of chalk disappeared. We could see the deep, deep green – almost black – of the slate beneath with no residue anywhere. And when Mrs. Smith started putting new numbers on the board for our next lesson, they stood out in beautiful white lines. Mrs. Smith paused and sighed: there’s nothing like a clean blackboard.

The tables quite nearly sagged with two kinds of meat, green beans, creamed corn, okra (fried and stewed), fresh and stewed tomatoes, mashed potatoes and potatoes au gratin, ice-tea, coke (never diet), rice and gravy, strawberry and cream cheese congealed salad with graham cracker crust, and home made rolls and/or biscuits, followed by six or seven kinds of desserts.