Only Cowards Beat Up Their Teachers
February 16th, 2007.Most people are afraid to fight. They’re afraid of confrontation, they’re afraid to take a punch, and most of all, they’re afraid that they’ll lose in front of a crowd of onlookers. Growing up, my Father tried his best to teach me not to be afraid. He wanted to know that if I were ever attacked or abused, I would confidently defend myself and not let fear or embarrassment paralyze me. My Father succeeded in that regard and to this day I am not afraid of physical confrontation.
After eliminating my fear, my Father attempted to teach me self control. Unfortunately for the both of us, he died before he could really drive his points home and for a long time those lessons went unlearned.
I’m not a child psychologist, so I can’t really explain to you how most children behave when they lose a parent they adore and idolize. I can only tell you how I reacted and it wasn’t with the least bit of sadness or tears. Instead, I was consumed with rage and that white hot anger propelled me through the rest of my childhood and well into my teen years.
Again, I am no child psychologist, but I suspect that if you take a kid with very little fear and even less self control and add to her a healthy dash of vague misplaced fury, you’ll end up with someone with pretty quick fists. Now, I never became the kid who would actively seek out smaller children to pummel in exchange for lunch money or anything like that. But let’s just say that if I felt mistreated or abused, I would likely skip the ‘talking it out’ part of the confrontation and cut right to part where I ‘punched you in your bitch face.’ This is not to say that I was some badass who never lost a physical confrontation. I lost plenty of fights. I am merely pointing out that, as a kid, I resorted to violence to solve my disagreements shockingly quick.
By the time I turned 15, standing too long on the precipice of grief drove me to physically assault my creative writing teacher.
I took the course in Creative Writing because my high school required each student to have 5 English credits for graduation. Most students would wait until the last minute (senior year) before getting their final credit, but I decided to get it out of the way early. A mere seven other girls had a similar idea making for one tiny classroom.
Our teacher, Mrs. T, obviously thought of us as a throw away class and gave us constant ‘free days’ in lieu of actually teaching. The other girls thought this was amazingly cool and loudly proclaimed Mrs. T the ‘best teacher they ever had’ while Mrs. T flushed and acted modest.
I, on the other hand, was bored and irritated. Instead of showering Mrs. T’s tendency towards leniency with endless praise, I made a few choice comments about her laziness while the other girls desperately tried to shush me. Mrs. T tried her best to ignore me, but soon grew frustrated and started leaving the classroom to chat with Mrs. B in her classroom down the hall.
After a few weeks of this, I started bringing a book to class so I could at least use the period to catch up on my reading. The other girls used the class to gossip and practice cheer routines. Mrs. T never spent more than 5 minutes actually in the room and would disappear almost immediately after the bell rang.
One day, my seven classmates ran out of gossip to discuss and became disenchanted with the entire scenario. They started complaining about Mrs. T and how she never taught class all the while shooting looks at me hoping that I’d join in with the bitching.
“Don’t look at me,” I said, “I’m not the one who told her that she was the Best! Teacher! Ever!”
Amy, a small blonde cheerleader, threw her head back and groaned at the ceiling, “But I’m so BORED!”
I shrugged my shoulders and stuck my nose back into my book. The other girls continued to whine and moan, quickly becoming more and more worked up.
In a fit of self righteous discontent, Amy got up and walked over to the chalk board. She picked up an unused piece of chalk and wrote a letter to Mrs. T. It said:
“Maybe if you spent more time teaching this class than talking to Mrs. B, we’d actually learn something.”
She left her nasty little note unsigned. The bell rang to dismiss the class and we all left before Mrs. T came back.
The next day we came to Creative Writing class only to be confronted by a terse Mrs. T who snappishly informed us that instead of yet another free day, we would be spending the hour in the library gathering information to use in a paper we going to write.
“I’m not writing jack shit,” I informed her.
She ignored me and we gathered up our things and followed her to the library. Upon entering the library, I sulked over to an empty table and opened up my book. Mrs. T sauntered over to me and whispered, “V, get up right now and start researching your paper!”
Just as harshly, I whispered back, “I’m not going to spend my time researching some stupid paper that you will probably never even bother to read. So you can go fuck yourself.”
“Can I please see you out in the hall!” she snapped.
I followed her out into the hallway, still carrying my book. I intended to open it up and read it while she yelled at me. You know, to really drive the disdain I felt for her home.
She started off her tirade by saying, “You know, V, you have a lot of nerve. First you write that nasty little note on my chalk board and then you—
I interrupted her to say, “I didn’t write that note.”
“Don’t be a liar,” she answered, “No one else would have written that. The other girls love me!”
Furious, I admonished through clenched teeth, “I didn’t write that note. Don’t call me a liar.”
“Well, don’t treat me like I’m stupid enough to believe that someone besides you would have done something so disrespectful and snotty.”
At that point, I lost my temper and threw my book at her. I hit her squarely between the eyes. Startled, she dropped her book of lesson plans or whatever the fuck that thing is that teachers carry around and papers went flying.
But I wasn’t finished yet. I rushed towards Mrs. T and started aggressively pushing her backwards while screaming profanities. Mrs. T, shocked that the situation had escalated so rapidly, merely put up her arm in a weak attempt to ward me off. I continued to lunge at her until I had her backed up against the wall.
Anyone who has been in a physical confrontation knows that when you have pure adrenaline running through your veins, funny things happen to your perception. For example, what was going on right in front of me (namely, my attack on my teacher) seemed like it was happening extremely fast. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw students coming out of the classrooms to crowd around us while teachers simultaneously pushed their way through the mobs all strictly in slow motion.
Finally, a teacher made it through and he grabbed me by my wrists. He yelled, “Calm down V, stop it!” but to me it sounded like a whisper. I blinked my eyes dazedly and looked over at Mrs. T. She wasn’t hurt, but she was very scared. This all happened back before kids brought guns to school and teachers then weren’t as tough as the teachers we have now. Mrs. T was sobbing and hugging herself while another teacher was calmly speaking to her in a low voice.
I’d just like to take a minute to point out the inconsistent way students from different backgrounds are treated. Had I been 90% of the other students in my school, I would have been led out of the school by a police officer wearing handcuffs and rightfully so. After all, I had just committed assault which is a crime. But since I had a well known, influential Mother who inspired fear among the entire school faculty, I was merely escorted to the guidance counselor’s office. It’s a shame, too. A pair of metal bracelets might just have been the wake up call I needed to pull my shit together. But then again, I spent 3 separate full nights in jail before my 19th birthday before anything finally hit home, so maybe not.
To sum everything up, Amy admitted to Mrs. T that she had written the note on the chalk board. Mrs. T wrote me a letter of apology for accusing me. My guidance counselor attempted to get me to write a letter back apologizing for striking her, but I refused. I never went back to Mrs. T’s class. Instead, I was permitted to spend the hour in the library for ‘Independent study.’ I managed an ‘A’ in the class. As far as I know, Mrs. T never actually broke down and taught the Creative Writing class, but I heard she started bringing in movies so the other girls wouldn’t get so bored.
And my point?
My point is that there are two types of people in this world: those who are afraid to fight and those who aren’t. Like I said before, most people are afraid to fight. They shy away from confrontation because they’re afraid to lose and they’re afraid to take a punch. Their cowardice prevents them from ever really standing up for themselves and unless they’re really pushed to the edge, a lot of them will spend their whole lives being bullied.
Then there are people like me who aren’t afraid to fight. But, in some cases, we’re even bigger cowards. We may not be afraid to take a punch, but our fear is a greater one; we fear walking away. Our compulsion to defend every minor little slight to our pride forces us to solve with violence what could have been solved with intelligent discourse. The idea that we might just walk away from someone who is mistreating us inspires in us the same feelings of humiliation that cause most to avoid violence while we rush headlong into combat. I, myself, have not been in a physical fight in almost 16 years and to this day, biting my lip and walking away when someone gets a little too disrespectful for my liking is one of the hardest things I barely manage to accomplish.
There is nothing wrong with defending yourself physically if the situation warrants it. However, one should not let their pride and/or addiction to adrenaline prompt them to constantly use violence to solve disputes that can be solved otherwise. One should not depend on their fists so much that they sacrifice their brain.
I think this is a something my Father would have taught me, had he lived.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
[...] Original post: Only Cowards Beat Up Their Teachers [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
[...] I found this post by Violent Acres pretty darned funny. VA (as she refers to herself) is a antonymous blogger who rants and raves about just about everything, but she definitely makes you think. She may be relentless, harsh, and maybe sometimes even cruel, but she definitely makes you think differently about situations, you could maybe learn something too! [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 5:26 am
[...] Like V, who is the bravest coward I’ve ever seen. Would you turn that perceptive introspection towards some kind of goal other than stirring up the people that annoy your cushioned existence? Or Monica, whose memoirs read like some eerie account of people I grew up with and went to school with and displays a hard sensitivity that I’ve only found in my favorite authors. Or even John, who I stumbled upon recently, adore like mad, and seems to generally want people to do something with their brains. Even the less well known and ridiculously intelligent people I’ve found along the way. [...]
April 20th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
[...] Now, in another article, I alluded to the fact that I often stayed out of trouble because my Mother had a lot of influence at my school. This is true, but not for the reasons you might suspect. In all actuality, I had spent the majority of my high school career confiding in my guidance counselor and as a result, she developed a seething hatred of my Mother. So every time I fucked up in school, she would show up and smooth things over for me because she was afraid I’d get in trouble at home. Being the rotten little bitch I was I took full advantage of this. [...]