I was a little bit distracted by her orange eye shadow and shocking brown blush, so I wasn't sure I heard her correctly.
"Congratulations on winning," said a 30 year old woman in a 1980's-era 60 year old woman's outfit.
I smiled. Maybe I was wrong about this woman who had interrupted every single session of our teaching professional developments thus far with stories--masquerading as discussion contributions--about how she alone reached unreachable students trough her miraculous teaching abilities. "Thank you," I stammered, a little bit thrown by the discovery that she could recognize the accomplishments of someone else, namely winning an easy but heated quiz among all teachers present.
She wasn't done. "Yes, it must be so nice to always have the luck of the draw," her tone implying that I had accidentally won. "What a great quality to have."
Oh. Did I just make a frenemy? Is that how that happens? Also, lucky? Part of me wanted to sing to her the litany of misfortunes that had led me be in that room and in that school district in the first place. After firmly establishing that my life trajectory seems to be steered by a senseless accumulation of minor bad luck, I would then go on to recite the epic of the non-life-changing unfortunate events of my life, such as blowing a fucking enormous hole in the crotch of my pants moments before a big speech. But sure, yeah, winning a book from a game of Kahoot! definitely makes up for that.
Instead I said nothing, and we sat down. We exchanged reflections on a video we had just seen (reflections which were backed up by further evidence that this woman had ended racial injustice and poverty in her previous community with her high school poetry lessons), and then she asked me if I were planning on attending the next day's optional behavior management professional development. Using my inference skills as a Reading teacher, I took what I already know about this woman, applied it to the text in front of me, and I inferred that she was using attendance at the behavior management session as some sort of gauge of my ability as a teacher.
My inference proved correct after I replied that I wanted to go because I felt it would boost my confidence and make me a more effective teacher in my new school. Not wanting to know her own answer, I asked her anyway.
"Ah, no, I won't be attending. I've been teaching for two years, so I don't really feel it's necessary."
At this I gave her a non-committal "fair enough," and looked to see if our facilitators were about to liberate me from this woman by telling us to return to our seats. Again, I had no such luck.
The woman continued. "Yes, my advice to you for this year is to just take a deep breath."
Ah. I see the miscommunication here. You see, woman with two years of experience, I was not actually asking for your advice. I, a woman who has spent the last six years working in school environments, am only speaking to you because the women running this professional development have required us to get up and find a partner. If I were even slightly higher up on the experience pay scale, my ass would definitely be parked in its chair during this activity, far from your musty blazer.
I took her advice--not for the school year, but to just avoid smacking her so hard the shoulder pads would fly out of her St. John blazer. Breathing deeply, I caught a glimpse of a diamond ring and plain band on her ring finger. Are you for real, God?
Wanting to scream, all I could manage to do was to look at her as though she had farted in the Buckingham Palace throne room. Even with a contract, could I be fired if I had flipped tables Jesus-style and screamed, "I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to have that and to be told that simply breathing a bit deeper or a bit more slowly is going to fix that? Ohhhh, shit, I just wasn't breathing well enough, and THAT'S why everything feels like a life-or-death situation. It's so frustrating that--I'm sorry, are you wearing cowboy boots? Jesus Christ, you are. You are a 1980s era power-suit grandma on top, but some sort of goth cowboy on the bottom. I am confused and a little bit frightened."
Finally she interrupted the silence by exclaiming, "Oh, you got one of these! Did it take a while?" To be honest, I don't remember exactly what she said because I was too overwhelmed by the fact that she poked my stomach as she grabbed the employee ID badge around my neck. Without actually consulting the employee handbook, I figured if I couldn't get away with yelling about my OCD, then I certainly couldn't get away with threatening to kick her fucking teeth in if she ever touched me or my ID badge again.
Maybe this just represents the deep divide between high school teachers and middle school teachers. Maybe high school teachers really are ending the poverty cycle through reading Hamlet, and meanwhile I'm just happy to have a day where only two or fewer disgusting things happen. And maybe the next time she interrupts PD to provide further evidence of her Christ-like patience for urban students, I will stand on the table and shout, "O Captain! My Captain!"
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