Primary School Teacher (rewrite)

80's Primary School Teacher, Acrylic on canvas, 40 by 40cm

This is the ninth in my Strange and Sometimes Troubled Memories series.

Sometimes little events can seemingly have a big impact on your life. This one did, and I’m not even sure if it was for better or worse. Later on in my school life I had teachers do worse things to me, like bullying me, hitting me, being generally nasty, but none of that effected me, this event did though.

Even at a young age I could tell which teachers were unworthy to be in a position of the care and development of children. A person who is not in control of their emotions and lets anger get the better of them shouldn’t be in charge of youngsters.

I didn’t like school much at all but my favourite time was story time. On Friday afternoons our class would sit on a faded rug on the sunny classroom floor and the reading would commence.

The room was warm and pastel coloured, I remember a bright poster on the wall with the alphabet depicted in unlikeable mnemonic illustrations, the only one still lodged in my brain is kicking king, the improbable way in which he was depicted made me feel uneasy. The only other objects in my murky memory of the setting are little bookshelves, mini tables and chairs and crude artwork made by us children, pinned up with curling edges. Now with further looking into the room in my mind I see a collaborative artwork we all did which deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs into the English alphabet. I later felt cheated when I realised that the whole translation system was fabricated to entertain our young minds and was wholly inaccurate.

Story time was a cosy affair, it felt safe, and I remember when I was younger, I would start to fall asleep and one of the squashier teachers would hold me in her warm lap and rock me ever so slightly the way my grandmother would.

This memory is from when I was a little older though, around seven.

We were all sat with legs crossed as a story was read out with enthusiasm by the animated Miss Bateman who at this point I still thought of as lovely. I remember all the female teachers in primary school being elderly ladies, one or two were like my Grandma and the rest were evil Anti-Grandmas. Miss Bateman was younger and attractive to my boy eyes, although I was only seven, I was at the age where females fascinated me after I’d, rather oddly, been told all about the birds and the bees by my sinister younger sister. Miss Bateman wore colourful clothes, had the airy scent of a meadow, a soft complexion and thick wavy dark hair and I only wanted to please her.

There was a school bully in my class, he was second in line to being ‘cock of the school’ meaning the toughest kid. Above him was a kid who had the face, build and height of a man despite his age being in single digits. My bully was about the same height as me with a shiny black Lego hairpiece stuck on the top of his head and a thin moustache above his angry mouth. He also had a face too old to be placed on a child’s head and in my memory he looks like a little shrunken James Brown, geduppa!

He had sharp thumbnails. It was rumoured that he cut them into spikes, all the better to stab you with.

I heard him whispering some gravelly insults behind my ear and I was trying to ignore him, then he was prodding me in my ribs and I whispered ‘stop it’ to him.

He then kept pinching me, I was getting very annoyed, then he pinched really hard with the dreaded thumbnail, and he didn’t let go, he just kept squeezing, the pain got too much and without thinking, I swung around with my left fist and punched him right in his funky face. He fell back and cried out and blood was coming either from his nose or from his lip, I can’t remember which, but there was blood. I just remember his crying bloody face as I was dragged up by the scruff of my neck by the teacher who had lost her shit and was screaming. She held me by my upper arms squeezing my shoulders to my ears and was shaking me and shouting. She forced me into a brown plastic chair with black metal legs in the centre of the room and yelled ‘Don’t you dare move an inch.’

The other teacher tended to my opponent taking the whimpering idiot out of the room, dabbing his face with a wet green paper towel, and simultaneously ushered the other children out to the low wooden benches in the corridor where they could change into their outdoor coats and shoes as it was the end of the day.

Now my beloved teacher was screaming in my face and jabbing her hard finger into my chest. She was saying things along the lines of how dare I punch this kid and that I could have really hurt him and she was going on and on and wouldn't let me speak, I kept saying he was nipping me but she didn't listen. She just repeated over and over that I could of really hurt him badly.

Then she shoved her fist in my face and was pressing it hard against my nose. She shouted 'Imagine If I punched you in the face, imagine what damage it would do, my fist is as big as your head, it would crush your whole face'.

I remember thinking that's a really weird thing to say.

I remember thinking her reaction was really uncontrolled and scary and idiotic.

Even as a young child I remember looking at and listening to certain teachers and thinking what idiots they were.

She had lost control of her temper. She was bright red, screaming and shouting and sticking her fist in my face and she was embarrassing herself in my eyes. I think what made it all seem worse was the fact that her behaviour was so unexpected. Men were usually the scary ones, not the lovely Miss Bateman who I’d often gazed at so dreamily.

Having said all that, it had the desired affect on me.

I never punched another person again, ever, not even to defend myself.

My life was changed, I'd always been the sort of kid who'd fight anyone, not anymore.

If a group of lads were beating me up, I'd just block and dodge their punches and kicks and never could bring myself to hit them back, so I'd just say something cocky like 'You can't get me down though can you!' and then sprint off, I was chased many times as a child and never caught.

When I was in upper school the other boys would bully me, they could sense my weakness.

I remember a kid once in class kept thumping me in the back each time the teacher was turned to the blackboard and then he whispered that he was going to kill me. I was holding back tears, not because I was scared but because I was sick of being a coward, I got up and started to leave. The teacher shouted 'sit back down' I said 'no, I'm leaving' and he just stared open mouthed at me as I walked out, that's when I stopped going to school.

One time when I was a bit older, around eighteen, my girlfriend at the time and I was taking an evening stroll through her picturesque village when a small group of moron thugs walked past us staring. Once they had passed I felt a kick right in the centre of my back and I flew forward with the force.

This guy was shouting 'You think you can give me a dirty look' and was swinging at me, all his friends shouting 'kill him'.

I kept dodging him and realised he was really drunk because each time I evaded his swinging fists, he’d fall on the floor in front of me. He did manage to connect a couple of times though and got me once right in the forehead.

I kept asking him to stop, a group of men who were outside a pub across the road came over and told them to leave us alone.

When we got back to my girlfriends house I looked in the mirror and I actually had an imprint of a sovereign on my forehead from his ring. My girlfriend was crying a lot and I remember this old familiar feeling of being a coward came back to me.

I kept thinking why didn't I just batter him, and then his friends, why didn't i stamp on his face when he'd fallen over. What was holding me back. Whenever anyone had been violent to me I always knew from looking at them and from the way they were hitting me that I could easily destroy them if I decided to, but I could never bring myself to fight.

It happened a few times when I was older and each time I'd wonder why I couldn't fight back.

My dad was a fighter and I knew he'd be turning in his grave.

After trawling through memories of the past, the only thing I could think of was this incident with the primary school teacher and the last time I'd properly cracked someone.

At the end of 2016 I started going to Krav Maga as it was the closest self defence class to my house. It was pretty rough, the guys were all hard as anything and I’d come home beaten up and bruised, but despite that, I did really well at it and got my first two belts. I held my own in sparring and the teacher would often boisterously praise me.

I stopped in 2018 when my friend died and I went on a little year or so drinking binge. I never went back to Krav. I planned to but then Covid19 happened and the branch local to me closed down.

Not long after that, my girlfriend and I were walking our dog Nora. Nora is a little weirdo and she went up and sniffed a fox poo then peed on it.

A car screeched to a stop and this big ugly bald Australian guy shouted out of the window 'Oye, pick your dog shit up'. I said, 'Oh that's a fox poo, she just peed on it'. I held up a full poo bag as we always pick up after our dog even if we were in the middle of nowhere.

I said 'honestly we are conscientious, we always pick up after her.’

He said 'I don't fucking believe you' I said 'Well, Fuck you then!'

Bad move.

He pulled up his car to the curb and said 'You think you're tough, I'll plough your head into the fucking pavement'.

I felt the fear a little and didn't say anything but was thinking about how I'd tackle him if he got out of the car.

I half worried though that I wouldn't be able to fight back.

Then I noticed a toddler in a car seat in the back of his car, I thought to myself 'Why is this idiot starting a fight with me with a kid in his car'.

My girlfriend, quickly lost her temper and went off on him, 'How dare you threaten him like that....' He was just dumbfounded as she gave him a right telling off, she has a great skill of making naughty adults feel like children, it was very embarrassing for him and me.

As I'd noticed the kid though I told my better half to stop and I said to the guy 'I apologise for swearing at you' and I told my girlfriend to keep walking.

He was looking at me confused, I stood there calmly and shrugged my shoulders whilst smiling at him and he just drove off.

I did feel like if he'd have got out of the car and attacked me, I would have defended myself, but I guess I'll never know.

Sometimes I think it was a blessing that this teacher, who I wanted to please so much, had flipped out on me that day, maybe it saved me from getting in a lot of trouble fighting as I got older, other times though, I just blame her for turning me into a coward.

When I was a teenager I went to pick my little brother from the same primary school.

She was there. She was shouting at a little boy who was in a chair, really, she was jabbing her fingers at him.

I waited with my arms folded until she noticed me watching, I put on my most patronizing, disapproving, disappointed look and shook my head slowly at her and said ‘Idiot’, she looked embarrassed and shocked.

I turned to my little brother and in a happy voice said 'How was your day Ryan?' he said ‘good!’ and I said, 'let's go home then'. and left.