The law said the teachers couldn’t hit us, but they had ways around that. They delivered our education through an authority based system. Authority leverages the power of pain as one of its primary tools.
The classroom was filled with heavy things. The desks were heavy and made of metal. There was a heavy pencil sharpener bolted to the wall. The door itself was gigantic and thick. We had a blackboard and our teacher’s fingers were stained with chalk dust by the end of the day.
So, they were more inclined to grab you in the morning so it wouldn’t leave a mark. They knew all the tricks. They’d practiced their tactics of torment for decades.
One of the assaults we all feared was the under arm grasp. Ms. Beckett moved slow in most instances, but her arm could reach out and snatch a child like the strike of a predator. She never held on for long, because the child’s instinct was to recoil. When she let go, he went spinning into a wall to bounce his skull off the bricks.
After a while, I stopped watching my fellow students when this happened. I watched Ms. Beckett instead. That’s how I learned she liked the sight of her charges getting thumped against brick. She even aimed at the corners. Her mouth would extend into a pencil line smile.
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She tried that trick on me too, but I’d learned to freeze. Her grasp didn’t deflect me into the wall because I didn’t resist. She grabbed me and let go and I remained still. Irritation flashed on her face.
We feared her, but we feared the principal more. The principal was a man. Back then it was unheard of for a principal to be a woman. He sat in his desk all day. Who knows what he did? As far as I was concerned, his only purpose was to be an object of fear.
“If you do that again, I’ll send you to the principal’s office.”
The bad kids got sent. They came back emboldened and Ms. Beckett had to fling them harder into the walls. Once you’ve looked beneath the bed and discovered there is no monster, you lose your fear. But those kids took hard beatings in the classroom and I didn’t want that either.
The whole school was made out of brick. It was hard, sharp and resolute. The stairs had been worn down by use, but there was no give to them. There was no give to anything in that school.
Every Monday, Ms. Beckett cursed the custodians for washing off her slate blackboard. “I keep telling them not to do that,” she growled. “It needs to absorb chalk before I can write.”
Then she tried to make a line, broke her piece of chalk, and scowled at us like it was our fault.
We sat trembling.
The early days were the hardest, when I skipped from the brilliant green of a summer day and first came into her room. After that, the leaves began to shrivel up and die. It got cold outside. I blamed her.
In the first weeks, I saw other kids get punished, but in my delusion I didn’t realize what I was in for. I assumed her actions were dictated by a discernible morality. It’s a dangerous thing to settle on the belief that all people are reluctant to torture innocent children.
Some people derive delight in delivering pain unto the powerless. They achieve some sort of sadistic high by watching those large, glistening tears form on the face of a child. I think they tell themselves that they’ve taught some sort of valuable lesson.
“You didn’t know about betrayal before. Now you know. In the end, you’ll suffer less because of what I’ve taught you.”
Those sick monsters actually want to be thanked.
I’d seen other kids bring in their toys and have them confiscated. Ms. Beckett just took them. She lectured us on the evils of theft, and then she blatantly and openly stole from us. That’s the essence of toxic authority. They can’t teach you anything because all their lessons are contradictory.
There’s an implied asterisk and the words, “Except for me.”
But that was the age when our knickknacks brought us unequaled delight. We were children. We wanted to share our joy with each other. We were compelled to do so.
After observing, I made the unfortunate assumption that I knew the rules. The kids who’d had their property taken had been disruptive, or they’d disregarded a lesson, or they’d made noise. So, seeking a rational explanation for Ms. Beckett’s behavior, I alighted on the assumption that she only took the items of the bad kids.
The next day, I brought in my prized Hot Wheel Pontiac Firebird. It was the car from Smokey and the Bandit. It fit easily into my pocket.
I felt comforted to have the object with me on the seven block walk to school. I felt its familiar weight, and the touch of the wheels upon my leg. The bell hadn’t rung yet, so I turned to one of my friends and said, “Look at this.” Then I pulled out the car to show him, before putting it back. “We can play with it at recess.”
But Ms. Beckett had seen and she stomped over to my desk. “Give me that,” she said.
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Afraid, I turned it over. She marched to the front of the room and tossed my car into a drawer. I felt as if I’d suffered a mortal wound. I was left reeling, not understanding the rules. I hadn’t been disruptive. I hadn’t yelled. Class hadn’t even started, yet she’d taken something of mine.
Perhaps she thought I would forget, but I didn’t forget. Ms. Beckett had established herself as an enemy for me. She was a destroyer and a manipulator.
I tried to tell this tale to the other adults in my life, but they only scoffed. “Surely that can’t be what happened. What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. I bet you were playing with it when she told you not to.”
It was no use arguing with them. But now, thanks to Ms. Beckett, I had a new category of person which I could use to make sense of the world. They went into my file of toxic authority. I resolved never to trust them. I resolved never to allow them any access to my beautiful vulnerability.
The year went on. I cannot remember one lesson that Ms. Beckett taught. All I learned that year was how to camouflage myself in plain sight. I remained still, while other kids were flung into the wall or the pencil sharpener or sent to the principal’s office as an offering.
By the end of the year, Ms. Beckett had to escort these kids herself. Her uncompromising rule had sparked the fires of rebellion in a few of my classmates. They raged against the chaos. If everything brought punishment, then why even try to behave?
She grabbed one of these under the arm, smashing him against the door as she dragged him from the room. I heard her steps down the hallway. Chaos erupted in the room because by now about half the kids took every opportunity to leap from their seats and engage in destruction.
I wasn’t one of these. I stayed put. But the end of the year was coming, and the day was almost done. I saw her desk, and I remembered the drawer where she’d placed my car.
Sliding up from my seat, I went. I pulled open her drawer, knowing I was taking a risk. “If I don’t see it right away, I’ll go back,” I promised myself.
But there it was, along with all the other things she’d stolen throughout the year. I reached down and grabbed it and paused. Did this action make me into a thief? Wasn’t I taking from an adult without permission?
Almost immediately, I dismissed the thought. This was my property. She had stolen from me. I’d done nothing. Even then I knew the difference between right and wrong. We’re born with our sense of integrity. Some of us choose to believe in decency even if toxic authority tries to beat that allegiance out of us.
I went back to my seat. My heart beat fast when Ms. Beckett returned absent the kid she’d removed. She sat at her desk. I feared that she might open the drawer and find the car missing. If that happened, I expected her to demand that the class should, “Think very hard about what you just did.”
She never investigated. She just pressured us into confessions.
But she didn’t look.
I escaped and knew the car was mine again. I wouldn’t bring it back to school. I wouldn’t bring anything I cared for ever again. That was my first trophy in a lifetime of struggles against tyranny.
I still have that car to this day. Despite many battles against the warriors of toxic authority, I also managed to retain my integrity.
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