Falls From Grace

Continuing on from the thought prompt in question #5 from yesterday’s post, I wondered if I had this kind of experience. No, not one as drastic as catching one of my teachers smoking crack in the locker room, but more a…de-pedalization of an adult; a fall from grace of some authority figure in my life. Or was I a rebel and distrustful of all authority figures from the beginning, leaving them no room to fall?

Admittedly I was the teacher’s pet and favorite youth of many of my friends’ parents. I did what I was told, did what I thought adults would want me to do, and completely trusted in their guidance. There is still a residue of this naiveté with me today in that I am “too trusting of dumb people” as Jason has told me. Two quotes I remember from my innocent youth reflect my ease at being the perfect child, one adults wanted around. One from the principal’s secretary, who knew me well from my time spent helping in the office, “You’re going to run this school some day,” told to me numerous times and to my parents as well. The other was my friends’ remark about her mother’s affection for me, said with a bit of teenage angst and jealousy, “My mother wants to trade me in for you.”

Part of this naiveté was in part a fault of my environment. Candia NH is a small, country like town. I knew each of the 60 students in my eighth grade class, all my prior teachers were in the same place, and I was sheltered from learning adult realities longer than most kids. I’m sure there was debauchery going on and double lives being hid, but I was able to remain oblivious and experience being a kid for a longer time. Part of the naiveté was from my size. Now, this may sound weird, but it is true – being small immediately equates you with all things “cute” and harmless. I was always the shortest and most petite kid in my class, do there was a certain dotage I was used to. It didn’t take me long to recognize this and capitalize on it to get me where I wanted to go. This may sound dubious, but I don’t think I was an evil person; I’m still not. I never had cruel intentions or hurt others in using this gift.

With all that said, one would think I’d easily have my perceptions of these mythical beings called teachers and adults shattered by the first truancy one of them committed. Yet I don’t think it was until high school when I started seeing them as what they are – people. In high school the environmental science teacher was an alcoholic who smoked pot after school with students. One of the English teachers was gay. One of the gym teachers was definitely a lesbian. My biology teacher had outright favorite students who then turned on him and egged his house. When he acted hurt and betrayed, I was mystified. My math teacher gave extra points to sports team members who got play time. It’s like high school was not just a time to grow up physically and slowly learn about the “real world.” No no no. High school was more like the time when my perception of people and life came down all at once.

Oh! The memory of a particular moment has dawned! My friend Caroline and I had Writing Composition class together. This was a junior level course taught by the mother of this girl the year behind us who we loathed because of her perfect blonde hair and perfect blue eyes. Finding out her mom was our teacher, the lady with the frizzy hair and slightly stout body gave us hope because we also had three of the biggest jerk off guys in class. Sometimes we would pass notes and talk softly when we were left to our own devices. We were both A students, just entered into the honor society, and mostly known as kids who didn’t goof off. Some how, this woman thought WE were the jerk offs in the class and she spent her time squinting evilly in our direction, waiting for any slip up while praising and laughing with the three jerks like they were her best buds. We should have known.

After a class session spent in the library, when we had somehow been louder than usual and appeared not to be working, in her opinion, she asked us to stay after class. When the last student dragged his bag out the open door, she walked over to us, her frizzy hair anchored down by her glasses, her finger extended in the Deadly Point, and said things that traumatized my sense of self forever. Sadly I can’t remember most of them; the words have been spam filtered from my mind for the damage they would cost to my system if they snuck through. The only comment I remember, probably the most devastating anyway, was her last statement of “You two do not DESERVE to be in the honor society.” And with that she coldly dismissed us back into the real world, the world of yelling kids streaming down the busy hallway, some stopping to talk to teachers all friendly like, and us - two rejected do-gooders floating along, knowing the interactions we saw were all a farce. The rest of that year and into my senior year, I vowed to do even better to show that teacher just how wrong she was about me. I ended up graduating in top 10% of my class, which is pretty good when the student body is 524 students big.

I haven’t thought about that situation in a long time. I could not understand how status played such a role in teachers’ perceptions of students rather than grades and personal experiences with them. How some heinous crimes were ignored because they were done by good ol’ Manchester family names or the star baseball player. After all my years of being accepted and adored by the exclusive adult/teachers club, I was suddenly cast out or simply over looked. My fall allowed me to see their fall at the same time with a little less hurt or disappointment then if they’d fallen alone.