Teachers Behaving Badly

This is just the recent stuff that's stuck in my craw. There's not a blog big enough to hold it all. My cronies have gone off the deep end. Some are still bobbing, awaiting the lobbing of a life jacket or rescue ring. Others are in an all-out race toward the horizon, the dock a dot in the distance if they even bother to look back.

We begin our tale with a mini-tyrant who torments those students who won't fight back. Perhaps you've heard of him before, he of the bending of #1's arm behind his back, accusing #1 of stealing his own gym clothes out of a locked locker, telling #1 that he can't wait until the day after a game to tell him all the mistakes he made, etc. A prince among faculty, our Tyrant. Friday, he walked about the lunchroom, handing out forms for his upcoming intramural basketball league before school to garner hours for career ladder. He set one down in front of every kid at #1's table. Except #1. He went on to hand one out to every kid at other tables, even kids who didn't play basketball. All this, just to put a bee in #1's bonnet, trying to provoke him, no doubt. #1 let it slide. Until he got off the bus at Newmentia. It was the first thing he spoke about. I asked if he wanted me to call Basementia about it. "No. I wouldn't play anyway, because HE is running it. But he did that on purpose, not giving me one." I'm sure he did. It's all I can do to keep HH from getting involved. I had to remind him that The Pony has three years to go in Basementia, starting next year. One of these days, Tyrant is going to mess with the wrong kid, and somebody's daddy will be waiting in the parking lot to knock his block off. That's the way we do things in Hillmomba. I would never do it. But I understand.

Second in our little reportage a trois, Mrs. NotACook accosted me first thing Friday morning and, grinning like Obama on a European campaign for popularity, said, "I hear science fair was a big mess." Why people want to always look for the worst, I'll never know (actually, yes I do, but it's political, and not work-related). And since I was AHEM one of the two people from our building in charge of science fair, why would she say that to ME? She might as well say, "I hear you're an incompetent nincompoop," for all the good will she is spreading. I told her that a few kids who decided to show up having not even entered the science fair and thus were sent back to school yet didn't return kind of made a mockery of the process. She grinned and nodded. Then she mentioned something about not taking a bus, which was the Principal's decision, not ours. We didn't take a bus last year, and everything went like clockwork, and in fact, praises were heaped upon us for bringing home places for each and every entry. Now a few bad apples try to spoil the bunch, and we are a laughingstock? Anyhoo...after 1st hour, I asked Mrs. NotACook who her source was. She didn't want to tell, but then said, "Toiletbreakerprivatepartexposer." Um, yeah. The kid who didn't come back to school, and thus received ISS for truancy. Yeah. That's a good source from which to draw a conclusion. And when did she talk to him anyway, since he never returned to school. Must have been that morning, just before or just after his truancy sentencing.

The final episode in our terrorizing-teacher trilogy was related to me by my buddy Mabel, as it occurred at her end of Newmentia. Seems MathCrony has a student who became ill and regurgitated in the classroom. This student, having a documented medical condition, was escorted to the office by MathCrony, a right good egg who was genuinely concerned about the girl's welfare. The next day, a certain lunch-inquiring relative of mine who has a room down at that end of the hall made a big ol' vomit bucket and took it into MathCrony's room and paraded about, making a big joke of MathCrony not instructing her students in the proper hurling method. MathCrony was mortified, and her class was riled up, because the sister of the unfortunate regurgitator is in their grade, and kids at this school are a tight-knit group. I've yet to hear what consequences may result.