Le maudit Mo D.

miss middleton's career mistake

I was just reading Amanda Marcotte's commentary on the NYT article that recently ran on a 15-year-old boy in Arkansas who has been perpetually bullied and how the brutes of his school's administration perpetually side with the bullies. Americans, especially those in the south, respect and love force and power over what is right and kind (a lot of these folks consider themselves Christians, another reason why I'll never do that). I just want to take this kid away and hug him. The adults who do nothing to stop this, or who for whatever reason, side with the bullies or the popular kids, or whatever, deserve bullets in their heads. Adults who put themselves in charge of children have a responsibility to provide a safe environment for every child. EVERY CHILD. Even the ones who make them uncomfortable.

Let's take a little trip back to 1988:

I was harshly tormented throughout junior high. I was an easy target: tall, smart, beaky, big vocabulary-using Mo. I wasn't blonde or tiny and I never wore those silly plastic shoes with the long laces that vapid NKOTB-loving girls BITD tied up their legs as if they were members of the USC Trojan Dance Team. Although I had a small circle of nerdly friends, the scions of wealth and popularity, children of doctors and lawyers who bought all their clothes at the local surf shop even though Fresno is over 100 miles from a surfable ocean, were handed scads of power not only by the other students, but by the faculty and staff as well. My "drama" teacher (fucking make-up huffing cunt named Kathy Robinson--ugly as sin inside and out), quick to shed a tear over the death of Gilda Radner (who was just as nerdy as me at age 13) had to carefully maintain her image and life's purpose as the mother of the Bullard High football star. As such, she openly favored the popular, as did the principal, another spackle-faced wench with a mildly-retarded jock son who liked to threaten to kick my ass before he got transferred to a special ed program at another school.

Got to love adults whose lives revolve around vicarious parenting and behaving like a teenager themselves. Fucking winners all.

Anyway, there were a few teachers who appreciated me and had my back and the backs of other intelligent and promising but socially disadvantaged at the tender, useless age of 13. Anyone with half a brain knows that these are the kids that grow up to be something. The engineers and professors and total rock stars in whatever they endeavor to do are the ones being fed shit by the worthless, vapid, unchallenged and uncultivated "popular kids." I have no idea why people are enchanted by these folks. My favorite people in the world are artists, scientists, faggots, intellectuals, and oddballs. Why are people who do nothing to shake up the status quo rewarded while those who create and make the world a more colorful, interesting place get shat upon? I am open in my contempt for people who are so boring and bland that they are only useful as doorstops. When I see people like this rewarded, I am dumbfounded. The nerds of the world make the world better. I wouldn't have this computer without the ingenuity of someone who was once an outcast. Internal combustion engines. Harriet the Spy. What are those shitheel popular kids doing right now? Lawyering probably. Opening expensive baby gifts. Restocking our planet with more dullards. Ugh.

Falling into this unfortunate category of easily-led sheep was my art teacher, an woman named Miss Middleton. Miss Mid, being egg-shaped, biracial, and a female who excelled in the sciences, had to have been as fucking geeky as me in her youth. I sensed this and felt a special fondness for this teacher who (I thought) had taken a special interest in me. I was a kid who needed to eat lunch indoors and spend recess in the library by necessity and she occasionally indulged me so I would not have to have my dignity challenged five days a week as I attempted to eat my lunch in a state of rare peace.

Twenty years later, you know what I remember the most about Miss Middleton? There was a field trip to San Francisco that the class was taking. An all day charter bus trip. Every gifted-program teacher was assigned to chaperone a bus. Miss Mid had promised me that I could be on her bus. I requested this in advance and she told me yes.

The day of the trip, I was told to get on the other teacher's bus. But Miss Mid promised me! Nope. Twenty years later, I do not remember her as a sensitive teacher, a mentor, someone who helped me. I remember her as the woman who put ALL THE POPULAR KIDS ON ONE BUS AND ASSIGNED HERSELF AS THE CHAPERONE OF THE POPULAR KIDS!!! All us nerdballs were shunted off to the nerd bus. I kid you not! I was so hurt! I felt so betrayed!

It broke my heart that the adults were playing this stupid game, too. Because that meant that I never had a chance. If a kid knows that you can't even look to the grown-ups for a modicum of justice in this world, you're screwed. I know now that a public school teacher making crap pay doing the world's most difficult job cannot be expected to double as a savior to beleaguered gifted kids who experience mockery and slander on the daily. I will argue on her behalf that it wasn't her job to placate me and nurture my self-esteem.

The measure of any teacher is what your 32-year-old former students say about you. I guess there was a lot of pressure from those overly made-up fugly cunts whose greatest achievement was pushing football players out of their twats to segregate the popular kids from the unpopular kids on long bus rides. I don't know. But imagine the wonderful things I could be writing about Miss Middleton right now if she had kept her promise so many years ago. She'd have been a hero. It's sad really. I sincerely doubt that any of those kids she put on her bus so long ago even remember her name.

Posted by Zerd at March 27, 2008 12:13 AM