The Substitute
When I was in 4th grade I, along with a few of the more famous trouble-makers in my class made a substitute teacher cry. I also believe that she decided to quit teaching and re-evaluate her career path. I don’t know that the second part ACTUALLY happened, but I like to believe it did.
Mrs. Rosenberg was out one day for a batmitzvah for one of her cats and the school pulled a newly graduated girl as the substitute. I remember thinking that she was young… looked like my friend’s sister (who I had a 4th grade fatboy crush on). She was the first girl I’d ever seen with a nose-ring. She was one of those newwave discopunks that became teachers so they could be “cool” teachers like Welcome Back Kotter, but are really pathetic and useless like Gabe Kaplan.
And school is prison. If you show any weakness you’re gonna be somebody’s bitch. She became our collective bitch.
It started innocently enough too. You know that organized book-drop prank? Where everyone drops a textbook all at the same time? We weren’t THAT well organized. We kept dropping books, pencils, threw rulers at the blackboard. All the normal annoying crap that kids do. While this annoyed her she’d only stare at us and ask us how she could help us “be good little boys and girls”.
So John Walters told her how: “YOU CAN SUCK MY NUTS!!!” which led to applause from the students in the back row. You see, my class was something like the classroom scene from The Forbidden Zone. Complete with gunfights and sing-alongs. Mrs Rosenberg knew how to handle us. But this girl? No such luck!
If she had been more like my sister, Suzan (“… yer cruizin’ fer a bruisin…”), she’d’ve been alright. But alas, the smell of fear was in the water. And our 9-year-old brains turned that into a signal to attack:
It started with a steady stream of bathroom passes. We’d all go, get the pass, make noise going through the door, make noise coming back through the door, slam the pass down… Repeat. I think I went to the bathroom 3 times?
Then when asked to do a math problem on the blackboard, Sean Haggarty decided that 45รท9= a picture of a giant penis and balls. with a smiley face on the balls. He was trying to draw a silly poofy mushtash on it, but she had him return to his seat before he was done.
During our morning “reading time”, Michael DeSantos decided that he was going to get naked. Our sub tried using psychology on him by saying that she’s not impressed by bad behavior and that his being naked was nothing that she hadn’t seen before. His response? “Have you seen this before?” and he pissed an arc across his desk. All while holding a copy of his book.
He got to go home for that. Our assistant principal put us all on warning. Now, we liked this guy. So we told him that we’d be good. We didn’t want him to have to watch us or anything. And we were good, until lunch.
Lunch that day consisted of burgers and tater-tots. Greasy, slimy, cold, undercooked, expired tater-tots. The kind that only grade-school cafeterias can get away with serving.
My friend, Tim, and I piled everyone’s tots on our trays. Mixed in some Ketsup. FILLED our mouths with the grossness. Sat on either side of the substitute. And in unison spit the tots/ketsup grossness onto the table. Our classmates approved.
I think that was the final straw. She burst out into tears, grabbed all her hippy stuff and ran out of the building.
FINALLY! We had won!
Our assistant principal took over the class for the rest of the day. For the life of me, I don’t know why we didn’t get calls home about this. Maybe because it was the entire class? Maybe because he secretly hated hippies or new-wave discopunks? Or whatever the crap she was?
I don’t know. All I know is that we never saw her again. I kind of wonder what happened to her, but not really.
