Thursday, September 18, 2014

Forgettable Lessons

These are the things I no longer wish to understand.

That thought lit up my brain like the Las Vegas strip at night. It went exactly against what my teacher was trying to drill in my head. He tapped the chalkboard next to the words he deemed to be the most important for the lesson. I looked straight at him but was really looking out of the corner of my eyes to see how my classmates reacted. He looked right at me and I bent to copy the words hurriedly.

“Tena, do you think I am talking to everybody but you?” He began as I felt my cheeks redden. “Your classmates have already written this information down and you are just starting. Hmmm…. maybe you think you know better than I. Perhaps I should hand the chalk to you.” He made his way over to my desk with the chalk outstretched. He stopped right in front of the desk with his hand still outstretched, holding the chalk. He towered over me when I was standing but I was currently sitting as he dressed me down; you could say he towered over me. I risked a glance up and saw, behind his large hooked nose, his piercing ice blue eyes boring into me with barely concealed contempt. He reminded me of a scarecrow; unusually tall and oddly proportioned. His face seemed wrong somehow; it was too pale and parts of it seemed like it belonged on another skull.

When our eyes met I knew I made a mistake looking up at him. I tried to compensate for it by hanging my head; allowing my hair to cover my face and my fear. He responded by slamming the chalk down on the desk with such force that part of it was changed to dust. “Teach!” He bellowed. I was rooted to my chair but could hear the snicker of my classmates. They were always laughing at me, I did not belong in this world of power and privilege. They mocked me openly in the hallways and tormented me in the classes. The quiet laughter at my humiliation had always seemed harder to brush off but the quiet laughter bothered me more than normal today. I pushed the tears and fear back inside and snapped my head up in the middle of the teacher’s tyrannical gloating. I met his eyes again with my best steely gaze, grabbed the chalk and headed to the board. I began writing on the board and the snickers died. For a second there was not a sound except the scratching of the chalk as I wrote. “What do you think you are doing!” He demanded. I kept writing and ignored him. He began screaming at me but I kept writing until the words of wisdom had been etched on the board. I read it again; pausing long enough to correct the grammar. Then I turned around, dropped the chalk and stomped on it before moving out of the way.

On the board it read:

The scarecrow made a mistake handing his power over to a teenager.

The room was quiet for several seconds until the unexpected laugh of the principal ripped through the air.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

grabbing