Children are cruel
But in my experience, teachers can be horrific too, and worse.

Mrs Morley

You fucking short-arsed, acidic old whore.

At junior school, I had this hellspawn as my second year teacher. A sour bitch overall, but she had moments of unrivalled cruelty sprinkled throughout her behaviour. Two moments stand out in my mind. One was when she was berating one of my fellow pupils (a troublesome, freckly fuckwit named Paul) for being a twot, and made to deliver some punishment to the moron with the aid of the blackboard rubber. For those of you who weren't educated in the mid-1980s, these were wooden blocks with fabric 'cords' on one of the flatter sides.

She threw it at his head. I don't remember if she took aim or not, though I doubt it.

Because it hit me in the head.

MOTHERFUCKER! She never apologised to me until my parents contacted the school. And then she was clearly unhappy about it. My parents lodged a complaint and she must've had it in for me from then on but then I might be paranoid.

The other occasion was during PE. I'm nowhere near the epitome of physical health and wasn't as a child - never have been. This is coupled with a fear of heights - even that of a standard Box - a familiar piece of gym equipment, but if you don't know it, Google it. So once class I found myself on this torturous item, shaking as I slowly got to my feet on top of it - thus making the distance to the floor (and my certain death) even greater. Beelzebub then starts calling me all the names under the sun to get me to jump from the Box, making me cry in the process. I mean for fuck's sake, I got called all those names by my peers (though why I should call those bastards peers, I don't know. I am and was certainly better than them, but more on that later) every day as it was, I didn't need it from an authority figure as well. Hateful, hateful waste of blood and bones. I'm starting to well up now recalling this - I'm right back in the school hall, sun shining outside, the sweet pea bush by the door growing out of control. I want to add here that this is all true and I urge anyone who ever bullied or is doing so, consider the affect on the bullied party. The incident I have just relayed happened to me when I was eight years old and for it to make me feel useless and pathetic over two decades later should give you some idea of the repercussions.

For a teacher to sink to the same level of bullying as their charges is unthinkable but as I've shown, possible. What I find scary is I now believe there are worse people out there than Mrs Morley and perhaps I got off relatively lightly. A horrific experience nonetheless.

Mr Glover

Bitter and hairy ginger giant

Mr Glover taught CDT at my senior school and before I even started attending, I'd heard of this person through my older brother. As a side note, both he and his wife (the imaginatively-titled Mrs Glover) taught at the school and she was a sour-faced old hag who never smiled. Though it can't have helped being married to a monstrosity such as Mr Glover. Mr Glover was never out rightly cruel to me, though I can't say I looked forward to his classes. I think this was because I had a tomboy streak in me from an early age which found me helping my father in DIY around the house, indulging my creative side with scraps of wood in the shed and getting the knack for hammers, saws etc, so consequently Mr Glover couldn't really pick holes in my technique. However I remember one time one of the class clowns was acting up as usual so Mr Glover dealt with it thusly:

The room was furnished with rectangular work tables with two vices fixed at either end of each long side. Mr Glover wound open one such vice and asked said clown if he would put his wrist into the open vice, with his back to the table. Mr Glover then wound the vice closed so it pinched the clown's skin but didn't break his arm or leave physical damage. He then repeated this with the vice at the opposite end of the table and forcibly put the clown's other wrist in the open vice and closed it. He then proceeded to shout (think Brian Blessed volume) at the poor sod for what seemed forever but was probably less than five minutes. This was done in front of the entire class. I don't know if complaints were ever lodged, but it made me scared of the bastard, on top of disliking him intensely already.

As someone (probably dead) once said, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mrs Morley and Mr Glover were / are two people who I'd not wish on the offspring of my worst enemy. I write '/ are' as I know Mrs Morley is still kicking about at my old junior school. I know this for two reasons. She spotted my poor nephew's surname (the same as mine) in her register and made some hell for him until my brother put a stop to it in no uncertain terms. I understood from that that Mrs Morley had been a bitch to my brother some six years before my year of hell. And about five years ago I attended an open day at the school in the role of aunt of a current pupil and the vision of death appeared by my side (by which time I'd reached my adult height of 5' 8" - apparently a little tall for a woman, but not some lanky Amazon) and tried to be the personification of sweetness and light to which I turned to my right to face her, gave her a splendid death stare (I've been told I can creep people out with a single glare) and stalked off without uttering a word, leaving her doing a decent impression of a suffocating guppy. Of course I've thought up a thousand witty retorts since that moment but I feel I got the message across nicely.

Of course I was subject to the bullying of my fellow pupils throughout infant, junior and senior school and I know I'm not the only one, and it was just about my weight. Yes, I came home from school in tears many times, and now I still have difficulty telling whether people are being genuine or not, I've developed an appalling penchant for swearing (as you may've gathered) and I'm often too sharp when I speak to make new friends easily. During my fourth year at senior school (age fourteen to fifteen) I never spoke to anyone who wasn't a teacher or one of my four close friends. I was fed up with giving people ammunition. This bottling things up attitude led to me thinking it was an ideal way to handle bad situations, to which end I found myself in counselling and on anti-depressants in my early twenties, and I've since learnt it's not ideal!

However, I know other people've had it worse and since the age of sixteen I've tried not to wallow in self-pity and get on with life, brush with depression notwithstanding. To this end, despite appalling academic failure at 6th Form college, that place was one of the best things to happen to me. I had a whole lot of new people to mix with, as well as my close friends from school - our circle of five all went to the same college. I learnt to be me again, the lively and friendly daughter my parents raised me to be. Okay, I'm still shy in large groups and have had jobs where I've been content to work on my own but I now I'm part of a large team, try to make friends carefully and get paid to spend all day chattering on the telephone to faceless customers which is ideal for me. I've got miles and miles of BT cabling to hide behind!
(Sahara Desert http://www.twitter.com/thesaharadesert for swears, Thu 14 May 2009, 17:21, 1 reply)

wow
That must have been difficult in the extreme to write and I hope that the exercise was cathartic for you.
Congratulations on being able to get on with your life and beating the dysfunctional at last!
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Thu 14 May 2009, 18:46, closed)