Life and Its Mishaps

Chapter 3

     There's plenty of teachers that shouldn't be teachers. Ms. Prawn is one of them. In my eleven years spent dealing with awful, demeaning educators, I've let a lot of hate build-up in my heart over these people, but never have I ever despised a teacher more than I do the woman that teaches my sixth period statistics class. She's been here not even a whole semester, and I already want to rip my hair out of my head. Or maybe hers. If you hate children, why would you decide to work with them? She has already called students names, threatened to punch them, talks trash about other staff members, makes unnecessary and degrading remarks to kids for no reason, ignores them, refuses to answer their questions. I mean...a teacher is supposed to be someone that is helpful and beneficial to your learning experience; a teacher should be someone you can look up to. Ms. Prawn will never be any of those things.
    She is a reminder that there are bad people in the world. Yes, there are people who murder innocent people, there are rapists, there are serial burglars, there are people who get sentenced to death and sentenced for life, but then there's a type of person just below them, people who are in your everyday life. People you might joke with, people you sit next to on public transportation, people who will never have their name in the news, nor in lights. The evil ones who manipulate, who control, who blackmail; the people that cheat on their spouse of twenty-eight years, the people who scream insults at their toddlers, the people that emotionally abuse their employees, some kind of sub-human that will purposefully make you cry on your wedding day, that will lie to you about who they are and who you are. People that aren't even just bad people but creatures I'd prefer to not call human at all.
    Like my homophobic driving instructor. Like my best friend's grandma. Like the kid that spreads rumors about people after dumping them into the trash can for no reason other than they felt like it. They're not the worst people, no, but the bad things they do don't get nearly enough denunciation. Not even close.
    Ms. Prawn walks in the room, griping about one thing or another, but I tune her out like always so I don't have to hear her being despicable. Which, I guess, isn't the greatest thing of me to do, for a couple of reasons really. Like the fact that I can't be failing classes this year, but mainly because no one else is going to stand up to her. So she'll threaten to slap a kid or call someone stupid and they'll be too scared to speak up (Reasonably so, of course. When you're just a high schooler trying your best, getting torn down by a person who's supposed to be building you up, it's easy to pull away and put the blame on yourself or to be too scared to know what to say, to be too shocked to know how to say it. Those students shouldn't feel weak for staying quiet, but strong for getting through it). However, everyone knows that I don't tolerate hatred and especially not in this type of situation. And I need to make sure Ms. Prawn knows this, too. So I'll put in my two cents, maybe raise my voice a little, glare at her. Then she calms down, looks a little scared, and backs off like a middle schooler.
    That's all Ms. Prawn really is: a scared little kid trying to make it in a building full of 500 intimidating teenagers, trying to act tough so she doesn't get picked-on. It's like this thing my mom read somewhere; it said something about "taking a hostile approach of communication." But like I said before, she's a teacher. She works with kids day-in, day-out. If she's scared or in a bad mood, whatever the case may be, she needs to shut up and save it until she leaves the building because that's her job. That's her occupation, that's her professional environment, and whether she's interacting with her superior, her equal, or someone that's supposedly beneath her, she should be a respectful person and not a piece of shit.
    Unfortunately enough for my friend Ally, who sits behind me, she heard every word of utter bullcrap spewing out of Ms. Prawn's mouth and was now whisper-ranting to me about how stupid and ridiculous she is. "I'm going to hurt someone," she says through gritted teeth. We've both kinda developed anger issues... and us being friends is just fuel to one another. We don't piss each other off, but we validate each other's unhealthy responses, which I'm pretty sure is worse.
    "Yeah," I scoffed, "Me too. We could tell her to meet us in the parking lot after school," I joke quietly, trying to be more light-hearted than her.
    "Yeah, it's really the question of 'Do we want to be in that kind of trouble?'"
    "Just imagine me trying to reach her face with my fists."
    "You'd need a step-ladder," she chuckled, clearly in a little better of a mood. Making fun of the short kid is always a good way to feel better, I guess.
    We can try our hardest to make it seem like it's all light-hearted fun and games, but we both know that if we had the chance, we'd take all of our anger out on our horrid teacher. We play it off as a joke, but lock me in a room with this woman, and she'd get beaten once my patience runs out. No matter the tone we take in this environment, we are still talking about something really serious. Most would look at me and see no signs of a real threat with me being 5 feet worth of skin and bones and all, but those who have seen me angry--and I mean really angry--know better.
     However, I do have a lot of feelings about life, death, and how to treat people. I believe that if you treat respectful people respectfully, you deserve that same respect. If you treat good people badly, you're going to regret it when I'm tearing apart your classroom. You just might even be worthy of being hospitalized if you take it far enough. I haven't done that to anyone before, but some people have been testing my patience. Anyway, who's to say I'm the one to make anyone regret their decisions? The consequences of their actions will bite them in the ass soon enough. At least I pray they do.