In fifth grade I was woefully shy, with a slapdash haircut and a crush on Robert from the class next door. I was going through some traumatic shit at home and was struggling to make even average grades. I can’t remember whole, long stretches of that time in my life, but there are certain days, certain instances that blaze in my head.
Thanks to a totally insane, 100% certifiably abusive and psycho stepfather, I spent a lot of my youth sheltered. I wasn’t allowed to say “gosh” in case it sounded sorta like taking the Lord’s name in vein. I was forbidden from drinking Cheerwine, no matter how hard I begged, because–you guessed it–it had the word wine in it. Well, my stepfather didn’t count on Marty Gross.
I sat next to Marty Gross all year long. Assigned seats. Marty was short and impish with big, round freckles all over the tops of his cheeks. He was a Very Bad Kid. Marty rode the bus with me, and he got off at the shabbiest, rundown shack in all of Ashland City. And that is saying something. There were always way too skinny dogs in his yard, along with an old couch and shoes and trash and cigarette butts. So, Marty had it pretty bad at home, we can all agree.
To say that Marty acted out due to his desperate situation would be a preposterous understatement. That kid was always getting paddled or sent to in school suspension. He would curse as much as he said any other words, and he was always hitting kids who’d never tell on him.
One day Marty was passing a folder around class that was causing quite a stir in the cramped aisleways of the classroom. Our teacher was frequently gone for just a minute, probably taking smoke breaks or something; it was then the folder would begin to float in and out of the hands in the room. I was the resident Ass Licker Kid, who was an obnoxious goody two-shoes, always willing to rat out my dearest classmate for my teacher’s affection or approval. Telling on Marty was something I knew I had to do, I just had to figure out what was in that folder. I managed to sneak a look at what was inside to discover, utterly horrified, that it was a Playboy magazine. A naked, squatting woman with red painted lips and slick breasts leering into the camera.
I was frozen with terror. This was my first ever experience with pornography and I was wholely unprepared for what I saw. I didn’t tell on Marty that day–and he never got caught–because I couldn’t find it in me to speak of what my scarred eyes had witnessed.
I didn’t have to tell on Marty the last day I ever saw him.
The last day I ever saw Marty Gross our class had a substitute teacher. She was older and overly strict, and Marty felt the need to antagonize her. She was there for a week, and every day it got worse. Marty made it his personal mission to make this woman cry. He ignored her, refused to listen, deliberately broke her every rule. He pushed and pushed and pushed, and to her credit she refused to budge for longer than most people could have. But he finally got to her, and she called him something like “rotten” or “trash.” I can’t remember. What I do remember was Marty losing his fucking shit. He stood up in his chair and began screaming that she was a “fucking bitch” and a “big cunt.” I sat totally immobile. I was stunned by the display–I’d never seen such rebellion toward an authority–but I was truly horrified by what happened next. Marty, standing in his desk, reached up and ripped off the substitute teacher’s wig. The now bald woman shrieked loudly and fled the room with her hands over her scalp. I nearly shat my Lee jeans right then and there. First of all, I DIDN’T KNOW THE WOMAN WORE A WIG. So, her all the sudden being hairless made this experience more like a horror movie. I think this was the case for most of the class, because no one moved or said a word, or even drew a breath. Within moments the vice principal had Marty by the collar, dragging him out of the room and we never saw him again. Marty started going to the alternative school.
Mrs. B was back the next day, and no one spoke of the incident after that. I think we all wanted to think it was just a scary movie.
12 comments ↓
I knew this kid in fifth grade who had a crappy home life too. He was always threating to beat kids up and always got sent to the office. One day I guess he was fed up and when the teach refused to let him go to the restroom he got up, walked straight to her desk, pulled it out, and pissed all over it. She was sure to let us go to the restroom when we asked after that.
Wow. What a fucked up kid. I’m torn between being sympathetic toward him for growing up in a situation he didn’t ask for and being sympathetic toward the teacher who probably lost her hair from chemo treatments or some other heinous medical act. Both were wrong to do what they did IMHO, but both were probably going through hell at the time and hence could be excused.
When I was in high school, back before speech replaced sign language, there was a girl named Amy Wein. I dubbed her Amy “Swine” because she was always such a nasty bitch to me. She took advantage of every opportunity to make fun of me. One day my alcoholic father slapped me across the face so hard, he fractured my jaw. Amy’s father was the doctor I saw, and in these days so many years before HIPPA laws had been enacted, he told her about me. I had lied that I’d been beaned by a baseball, but everyone knew I was a big sissy who’d never played ball in my life. So, from that point on, Amy and I engaged in many battles. Once, in social sciences, she made a comment about my drunken dad and referenced my jaw. It was a deliberate attempt to embarass me further. She stopped just at the point of telling what she knew. Shortly thereafter, I confronted her, wanting to know why she had it in for me. With astonishing candor and wisdom for her young age, she replied, “Because I hate myself, and it’s easier to take my anger out on you.” I later learned that she had a miserable home life and was basically ignored by her parents who were ashamed that she wasn’t pretty or the smartest girl in class. I’d like to say that we had one of those ABC Afterschool Special endings where we became best friends, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we reached a truce. In fact, from that moment on, she made it a point to say hello to me in the hall, and I always smiled back. It’s hard as hell to be a kid. Some people think I’m crazy, but I wouldn’t trade being 38 for anything. I’m still young enough to enjoy my life, but at the same time, I have enough wisdom to appreciate both the past and the present.
That kid was always getting paddled
To me, that’s the weirdest part of the story. We went to very different schools.
You mean there were school where the troublemaking kids DIDN’T get paddled all the live long day?
I remember kids like that… like Chris Thomason, who told the substitute teacher to “eat the peanuts out of my shit, bitch!”
And that one kid, Melvin, who stabbed so many kids with his pencil that he was removed from class after only 20 minutes, and was never seen again. Yet his legend endured…
knewman, did you grow up in the South? I would find it hard to imagine a southern kid NOT being aware of the omnipresent and all-punishing paddle that was teh legacy of a fine upstanding southern education (the one that puts knowing bible songs by heart above, say, science).
knewman grew up in Chattanooga, but he went to elite private schools. The all-boy kind where they wear blazers and ties and a black (or brown!) belt.
This is why he knows more than me about science, but also why I get to tell him tales of bus fights and milk served in plastic bags and how different a high school can be when you throw in–oh, I don’t know–girls.
About 5 months after I moved to Nashville, I returned to Minnesota to visit the friends I had left behind. The fact that paddling was a punishment alternative blew everyone’s fucking mind.
My girlfriend does not listen to me. We didn’t have to wear belts, and blazers were only required once a week. And there were girls in elementary school. But I do still think of the kind of mayhem and hijinks in the classroom as abstract parables from sitcoms and movies, not as a part of real-life school. I had never witnessed a public school classroom in session until I took some education classes in college. It seems like a miracle that any learning took place with all of that going on. I have more respect now for people who had to fight through that in order to receive an education.
Oh, Britt, you make me cry with laughter, and not in the metaphorical sense.
I love “slapdash haircut.”
Bagged milk?! I thought that was just a Canadian thing.
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