I hated Mrs Montgomery. She was the Pol Pot of the classroom. She was the Black Vulture of the playground. She was the Lex Luthor of my Year 3 schooling. I absolutely despised her.
When I shook her hand on my first day of Year 3 I felt her scaly, sweaty skin on mine and when she said hello I felt like my ears would never recover from her squeaky, loud voice. She had brittle brown hair that was beginning to grey at the roots and large wrinkles on her forehead that looked big enough to hold my lunch money. Whenever she bent down to look at my drawings her stinky breath would waft across my sniffer and I would have to pretend that I was coughing and not gagging.
The classroom walls were full of motivational posters and horrible pictures of her that previous students had drawn. Colourful trucks and puzzle pieces littered the floor and mobiles hung from the ceiling. The room smelt of glue and pencils and desperation. I heard a faint bell sound and Mrs Montgomery told us all to find our assigned seat and then to face the front of the classroom. I looked at the bunch of omelette heads on my table and I felt hostility towards Mrs Montgomery. Who would want to sit next to Fat Johnny Jim? He smelt like he lost some cheezles in his rolls and that they have started to grow mould and ferment.
While she continued to blabber on I drifted off on a wild day dream involving jaguars and Ping-Pong balls when I suddenly felt a sharp whack on my head. My eyes drifted back into focus and I saw Mrs Montgomery standing in front of me with a ruler in her hand. Her face was red and she looked mad.
"Pay attention to me Kiera! That is very rude to get distracted while I am speaking!" Mrs Montgomery hissed.
"Why should I pay attention when you have nothing good to say?" I innocently asked back. The teachers red-face got a couple of shades darker.
"Never talk back to me young lady! Go sit at the back of the classroom!" She boomed.
I shuffled to the back of the room and I started to close my eyes and find my happy place when a sudden burst of feeling ignited in my stomach. I thought about it for a second and realised that this feeling was hatred! It was hatred towards Mrs Montgomery! So I sat there at the back of the room and thought about how mistreated I was by Mrs M, and I knew that I needed to eradicate this teacher like the smallpox was in 1977.
At lunch that day I decided to sit with some students from the older grades as I wanted to find out as much about Mrs Montgomery as I could. Some students said that she was the kindest teacher they have ever had (liars) and others said that she was the all time worst teacher (behind Miss Taylor). Mrs Montgomery had came to the school 2 years ago and was married with no children. She enjoyed the guitar and kept her precious guitar 'Sandy' in the supply closet. I learnt that her weakness was chocolate pie and she had an obsession with breath mints and always kept a tin in her desk drawer.
So after the lunch bell rang I returned to class with a wicked plan in mind to get rid of Mrs Montgomery. I just needed helpers. So during play time I weaselled my way to every student in the class and recruited them for my devilish plan. I worked quickly and by the final bell sounded I had convinced every omelette head to help me take down Mrs Montgomery.
So that night I went to work preparing the supplies and getting everything in order. I had this great need to get Mrs M to crack but I knew that if the plan worked Mrs Montgomery would definitely, without a doubt, crack like a chick on hatching day.
So the next morning I woke up and packed everything into my small Hello Kitty backpack and set off for school. As soon as I walked into the classroom I felt the nervous excitement radiating off my omelette heads (my classmates). I gave them all a quick smile and a thumbs up. Mrs M sat unsuspectedly behind her desk as I gave Fat Johnny Jim the signal. And so Faze One began.
Fat Johnny got up and started to squeal in pain, he grabbed at his stomach and started to breath heavily. Mrs M jumped up in surprise and rushed over to Fat Johnny. He looked up at her in pain and slowly got out five words:
"Take…me to…the Nurse" Mrs M looked at us in a panic and said not to do anything silly while she was gone. She and Fat Johnny rushed off. And so began Faze Two. Peter, the boy who sits across from me and picks his nose, leaped from his chair and headed towards Mrs M's desk, he nodded at a girl called Cecilia and Cecilia walked to the door to let us know when Mrs M (or the Aswang as we liked to call her) would return. Peter reached the Aswang's desk and opened the top left drawer. The drawer that held her precious breath mints. He took the packet and swapped the mints with identical looking laxatives. Cecilia quietly gave the signal that the Aswang is returning and they both raced back to their desks. Mrs M returned looking frazzled and unkempt. She sat down and grabbed her mint tin and put 5 in her mouth. She then took a deep breath and began with our history lesson. She only got 11 minutes into it before she started pulling a funny face and squeezing her cheeks together. Her eyes started to swell and she raced out of the classroom yelling for us not to do anything silly while she was gone. The start of Faze 3. Cecilia returned to her lookout position and this time a funny boy called Patrick sauntered over to the Aswang's chair and took his time to carefully place tacks on the teacher's chair. Cecilia gave the signal again and they returned to their desk. Mrs Montgomery shuffled in, adjusting her skirt and flopped onto her chair only to bounce up screaming a second later.
"Who has done this!?!" she screeched when she finally found the sharp objects protruding from her bottom. The classroom tried to snuffle their chuckles but this just made Mrs M more angry.
"GET OUT! ALL OF YOU! GO TO RECESS" We all scurried out of the room with haste and hurried outside to watch the Aswang from the window. She paced around the classroom, chucking things around the room for a couple of minutes before she left in a huff. We all looked towards Juan who had already started to climb through the window. Faze 4 was off with a bang. Juan entered the classroom and disappeared for a number of minutes to return with a devilish grin on his face.
"It's done" he huffed as he climbed out of the window. He landed on the ground just as the bell rang.
We re-entered the class and sat down at our seats. We looked around at the damage that Juan had caused on the back wall and chuckled. Mrs M walked in and looked to have regained her composure. She went to start the lesson but her eyes caught the large red writing on the back wall. The large red letters that read one word: 'SANDY'. Her eyes flicked over to the storage room where the door hung open just a little. She dashed in a most unladylike manner to the room and banged the door open. She let out a soft whimper as she grabbed what was left of her guitar from the storage room. She silently brought it to her desk and started to weep. I silently got up and went to the desk.
"Mrs Montgomery. I hope this chocolate pie can make you feel better." Mrs M looked up at me in disbelief and pure joy. She looked down at the pie and began to cry again. She tried to mumble a 'thankyou' but she dove into the pie with such gusto that all I could make out was 'mphgsufhsfjfyummslkfj.'
When Mrs M reached the bottom of the pie she saw that there was a photo at the bottom of the tin. She had a closer look at the picture and saw that it was me, making the 'chocolate' pie.
"I hope I didn't overdo it with the special ingredient" I smiled at her. Mrs Montgomery's jaw dropped and she looked down at the empty pie tin. Tears started to form in her eyes and her lip quivered. She looked up a me with a crazed look in her eyes.
"You did all of this didn't you?" she breathed. I shrugged my shoulders in pure innocence.
"I hate you Keira Krust. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I am quitting and never coming back!" She shrieked as she ran from the classroom leaving a trail of tears in her wake. We had cracked and smashed the Aswang.
The next day when we returned to school I rushed to my classroom as quick as my new Chuck Taylor's would take me. I bundled through the door and dove to my desk. I looked around the classroom and saw all the other students with the same feeling of anticipation on their faces that I had. Everyone was deadly silent in wait for the new teacher to replace Mrs Montgomery. No one moved or breathed. Finally the old rickety handle of the red wooden door started to turn. It slowly crept open and in stepped the last human I wanted to see. Miss Taylor. My new teacher was the dragon lady, Miss Taylor. As her fingernails dragged down the blackboard, I looked towards my fellow classmates and all in silent agreement, we needed to concoct another take down.
