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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Lessons From A Night Without Sleep
The End At the end of the day I decline to show them my motorcycle. "I said you could see it if everyone behaved," I explain. The kids are disappointed. There are twenty-five minutes to go until the last bell. "But I will read to you if everyone stays quiet." Oliver, a quiet, well-mannered boy who finishes his work quickly and conscientiously every time, comes up to me and says hopefully, "Sometimes our teacher lets us draw while she reads. If we're quiet." I pass out two sheets of paper to each student. One student says she doesn't know what to draw. "Okay," I say, "You can draw a nice picture for Miss Bubblyperky." One student has told me that she misses Miss Bubblyperky because Miss Bubblyperky is nice and I'm not. "Or," I continue, "You can draw me a picture of how mean and nasty Ms. Sublingua was today." You were nice, one girl protests. "No," I correct, "I was mean and nasty and yelled all day. So please draw me a picture of me being mean and nasty." One little boy runs up and says excitedly, "I'm going to draw you a picture of you hitting a little girl!" I laugh and say, "Don't forget to put your name on it and bring it up to me!" One girl draws a picture of me in a yellow shirt with a red skull and crossbones on the front. My teeth are multicolored sharpened daggers. A bubble is coming out of my mouth and in the bubble is written "Be quiet and shut up!" It is my prize of the crop of drawings showing Ms. Sublingua being mean and nasty. "Bye!" They all yell happily as they run for the bus. I spend a sleepless night wrangling with the fact that I had to wrestle down the desire to bodily harm small children. I wanted to restrain them and make them mind me by using force. I didn't, but the desire to do so resides in me and I wrangled it in between trying to teach multiplication. I wrangled it and shoved it aside and tossed and turned all night. I wanted to take them by the arms and sit them very, very firmly in their chairs and use serious threats to get them to mind me. I am not a mother for a reason. In fact, I am not a mother for this very reason. I grew up with a demon who used to break brooms over my back and leave welts on the backs of my legs with a leather belt. I was a relatively good child, too, a conscientious and earnest child. (I say in my own defense.) I won't say that I was never bad, but I wasn't ever bad in such a way that might warrant being beaten. I don't think. (And that doubt is still gray area, despite years of therapy trying to make it not be so.) Those children were not misbehaving in such a way as to be beaten. No one was causing bodily harm to another. No one's life was placed in any danger. And so I yelled instead of hitting. Is one better than another? I think so. Later, talking to Judi, I was telling her that I blamed the teacher, Miss Bubblyperky. Yeah, it was the kids I had to deal with, but ultimately, their actions were the effects of her actions. Those children are the way they are in the classroom in large part because they have been allowed to be so. They are seven and eight years old and still want adult approval. Miss Bubblyperky hands out approval in such a way as to teach them that discipline is an externally validated trait. Of course then when they aren't given treats they misbehave. They scream and yell because they're kids. They scream and yell because they're bored. They see that I won't hand out treats for their being good, so they decline to be good. Given their training, it's a logical conclusion. I can't change anything in a six hour school day. I can't change in six hours what Miss Bubblyperky has been doing for the last seven months. I couldn't even clean and organize her disgustingly dirty and incredibly disorganized room in six hours, much less organize her little charges. And anyway, I left my cape at the cleaners. Thank Them Anyway Thank you, Universe, for Mrs. Lopez, who taught me that some adults believe that some children never will, even at the age of seven, have a clean slate again. Thank you for Romanita, Oliver, Eduardo/Hector, Manual, Miss Bubblyperky, expired Dannon yogurts. Thank you for this day. Thank you for the lessons of a sleepless night and for demons to wrangle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
More lies:
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