>I absolutely hate being rained on when I have someplace to go. Not that I’ve been rained on since I arrived back in my hometown, but I just wanted to vent that sentiment.

I only accepted one teaching assignment last week, and when I accepted it, this is the confirmation that I heard on the ultra-sophisticated voice-activated, computer-generated ‘substitute management system’ : “MHS, Mrs. H, Advanced Math, Wednesday October 31st from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm”. Sounded innocent enough to me.

I was very excited about being with ‘the big kids’. Had not really walked the halls of that school since my own graduation from there in May 1986. Oh how things have changed. There is an entirely new wing that was originally built to house the freshmen when they finally integrated them into the high school. When I was in ninth grade, we were on our own campus, Pemberton High School, which was the non-white high school before integration. And that is where ninth graders should be – alone, together, to forge some sort of pre-adult, communal identity, before being cast to the lions with the senior high students.

I visited a few former teachers, heard a few crazy stories[1] and made my way to a teacher’s lounge, as Mrs. Holloway had conference period for the first class block. Much to my dismay, I learned that the high school has adopted block scheduling, which means that those heathens are in your charge for 1.5 hours at a time. No end in sight.

The bell rang, and I made my way to room 905, which may as well have been room 666 as far as I am concerned. Halloween. Full Moon. Overcrowded classes. Recipe : Disaster. The class began filling the room, and I prepared to call the attendance roll. They were not nearly as impressed with my Spanish skills as the children at the middle school. I’m not sure what, if anything, would have impressed them. The first class was behaving alright at first, generally pretty disrespectful and mildly rowdy, but I was able to get them to at least sit down and accept the classwork that the teacher had left for them. There were several who never even attempted to take out a pen or pencil and pretend to make an effort. Those few I loaned my personal pens (which I value greatly and thankfully they volunteered to return to me) and the rest I just tried to watch over and make sure they were working. Well, as we are all familiar with attention spans of teenagers, that semblance of peace lasted only about 20 minutes. Seventy more to go. So then, they decided they wanted to pick on each other or just sit and visit.

They were completely uninhibited about their conversations and other conduct. One kid looked at me and said, “Miss ******, you ever smoke weed?” Huh? What in the hell am I supposed to say to that? Correct his grammar? There was no answer that was going to be anything but sudden death for me. Then there was the ever-delightful Tony G, who began telling me about how he started smoking dope the summer before his ninth grade year, and you know, every now and then, he might get drunk on a special occasion, but usually he’ll just stick with the weed and the odd 40 oz. I looked Tony straight in the eye and said, “You know, it’s probably better if you don’t tell me all this.” “Why?” he wondered. I said, “Do you know Coach Harper?” Nods. “He is my uncle, and you know what else?” Appropriate look of interest/disinterest. “I spent six years working in the District Attorney’s office here in town, and they’re all still really good friends.” Deer In Headlights. No more from Tony G the remainder of class.

And sweet little Jaumar M. He was wearing a Yankee’s jersey, so I asked him if he knew who won the game last night. Response: “I don’t watch no damn baseball.” Okay. He was one who had to borrow a pen from me. He was not doing his work, so I went over to stand beside him, put my hand on his back and talked to him for a while. I stood there for probably for or five minutes, and then Jaumar had had enough. Without even looking at me or stopping what he was doing, he just said, “Why is your hand on my back? I don’t like teachers or anybody else to touch me.” I didn’t move it.

When we were standing in line to leave class, Barry G — who at various impromptu times in the middle of class, would jump up on top of his desk and shout, “Do you know who I am? I’m Barry G!” Great. Sit down. – asked me, “Miss Wright, how many you been through?”[2]All I could think to say was, “Not nearly so many as you’ll ‘go through’ when you’re somebody’s bitch in The Big House’! Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.” But I didn’t.

And that was just the beginning of the day. But the rest isn’t any more interesting than that, so I shall spare you. I left the high school campus that day, swearing never to darken their door again. I suppose I was beside myself, because I started driving aimlessly around town and ended up at my Dad’s office, where I proceeded to cry off and on for the next hour. It was just so depressing and disheartening to me. And that was advanced math?

Later that night, I ran into one of the high school counselors at a Halloween carnival. She’s also a family friend, and she asked me how my first day at the high school had been. I assured her that she was mistaken. It was my LAST day at the high school. I told her how horrible it had been, and she asked me whose class I was covering. I told her, and she said, “Oh, yes, she took Mrs. W’s place.” I talked about some of the kids in the class, and she looked at me, puzzled. “Barry G is NOT in advanced math!” I assured her that that was what Mrs. H had stated on the message. Lisa said, “You were teaching Math Modeling!” Huh? She told me that it was as far from advanced math that you could get. They require three years of math at the high school – Algebra and Geometry are required, and Math Modeling is where all the students who don’t want or aren’t skilled enough to take Pre-Calculus or Trigonometry or whatever are enrolled. Well, that explained something, at least. The disparity between my expectations and that stark reality.

It’s difficult to remember what else happened last week. I spent one day with my cousin Eva, who was our next door neighbor when I was growing up in the country. She is seventy-four years old and is active, as always, maintaining a home and a small farm/large garden. When we didn’t have a washing machine, we would go next door to Eva’s house and use her three-legged old-fashioned one.[3] The kind that you had to hook up to the water hose and which had an external wringer that you had to feed each item of clothing through individually before hanging it on the clothes line. She taught me how to make homemade Popsicles when I was little, and there was always some fun chore you could help her do – feeding chickens, digging potatotes, working the flower garden. We had a nice time visiting.

Was driving home from the movie on Friday night (Monsters, Inc. – great!) with my sister, and her three daughters, and we passed a business whose sign said the following “Simpson Pest Control : In God We Trust”. That was part of their logo! I just found it a funny series of words to strong all together.

I have a picture to include, and hopefully, I will find someone with a scanner so that I can send it. It pretty much sums the whole thing up.
[1] While chatting briefly with my ex-yearbook sponsor, Isabel L, who was trying fervently to talk me out of substitute teaching, even as a recreation, and she introduced me to another English teacher, Mrs. Ivy. She asked Mrs. Ivy to relay to me the story of Katoya, one of her senior students, and a recent outburst that Katoya had in class. Apparently, David was bothering her, and she exclaimed to the class, “David S.’s mother sucks his dick!” Delightful.
[2] Referring to men.
[3] The kind I showed my nieces at an antique mall last week, and Mayzie asked, “What is that? Some sort of oven or something?”