Crossing the Line
Everyone knows kids can be somewhat irritating at times. God knows my kids are the quintessential pests engineered to drive as many adults mad as they can in an 18-year period. An every sane human being expresses that irritation; that’s normal. But one of Lukas’s teachers crossed the line this week. Right after the holidays, Lukas forgot some of the rules in her class (he has my brain) one of which was to right answers on a separate sheet of paper rather than on the workbook page. She scolded him, of course, but then she went on to say (and I kid you not) “If Lukas strangled someone and got arrested, that’s be good, but if someone strangled Lukas and got arrested, that’s be a waste.” Hmmm. Pretty juvenile and pretty harsh. Holy crap, it’s like saying “You’re better off dead,” or “Your life isn’t worth anything.” I asked him if he wanted me to intervene or if he’d rather handle it himself and he chose the latter. I said that was fine and went over some appropriate, respectful ways of asserting yourself to a teacher or another adult. This naturally irritated him because many of the choices were—in his words—prissy. But that is my job (to irritate children) and I’m proud to say I do it quite well. I’m waiting to hear about a promotion any day now. So later that evening, I recount the whole saga to Rune who completely comes unglued. He demands that one of us report her immediately to the authorities—if I didn’t, he would. I therefore promised to take care of it as soon as the school opened the next day. I know with great certainty that if I had not, he would have, with a flurry of fingers pushing touch tone buttons, notified the FBI, CIA, Sheriff’s Department, Hedwig Village Police, the school superintendent, the Better Business Bureau, the S.W.A.T. team, Consumer’s Report, Marvin Zindler, Fox News, the national PTA, and, well, you get the picture. So I asked the grade level principal to investigate Lukas’s claims and report back to me. Lukas called me from school sick that day. He’s never sick. Needless to say, I was just a smidge suspicious and told him to go to lunch and come back to the nurse’s office and call me if he was still sick. He did. I told him to pick up his homework from the remaining classes and –a guess what—drum roll please –one of them was that witch of a teacher’s! Big surprise. When I came to get him, he had gathered up all homework assignments except for hers, insisting that he was certain there would be no homework. We’ll see if he lasts all seven periods today. Anyone wanna place bets? Now that you know the story, let’s take a little poll: Should we institute capital punishment for teacher cruelty? Circle answer: Yes or Yes. Should someone cram a thick role of workbook pages up that teacher’s ass? Circle answer: Yes or Yes. Should she be arrested and then strangled? Circle answer: Yes or Yes. You be the judge.