Sent to the Principal's Office

Should I start with the time I threw a pumpkin head at third graders or when I swore at a nun? It’s probably easiest to report chronologically, starting when I was a child and working my way to adult retribution.

The first time I remember getting a principal’s “talking to” was for ditching class in public elementary school. To be fair, there were trees not far from the school, and they didn’t call me stupid or most-likely-to-be-a-failure, so I preferred to read in their shade.

Fast forward to a religious middle school where my behaviors would be fixed. Highlights of my principal visits include being caught on the boys’ playground (gasp!), ditching a required vocal solo at a stranger’s funeral during recess time, and swearing at a nun.

The nun was on the phone with my mother, who never believed me for obvious reasons. Sister Charlan was embellishing the story about my visit to the boys’ playground by adding, “And then she swore at me when I made her come inside to call you.”

I was then handed the phone and began to defend my 11-year-old innocence, “I was on the boys’ playground because I wanted to play kickball with them. Oh, and I didn’t swear at the nun.”

“Who do you expect me to believe?” my mother asked.

“Of course,” I said, making a delightful realization that I would be getting in trouble for swearing at the nun either way. “Hold on a sec,” I said to my mother and then looked right into the nun’s golf-ball eyes and said the F word for the first time in my life… over and over. Loudly.

I was also sent to the principal’s office multiple times as an adult. The first time was when I volunteered as a reader in my son’s classroom. It was almost Halloween, so I read them a children’s version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Maybe it was the cauldron and dry ice, or the darkness of the windowless room with the lights off, or the creepy music I played on the boombox as a Zimmer-like score to the words. (Did I mention I was an actress at the time?)

It wasn’t any of those things, so the principal told me. It was the headless horseman moment. Hidden beneath me was a foam head, orange and pumpkin-shaped, that I threw at just the right moment in the scariest scene that I timed with the build in the music. I really didn’t know that third-graders would scream and cry like that.

I’ve since visited the author’s grave and took a midnight hike near it at Halloween, so throw that into how you understand my sensibilities on these matters.

You’d think I learned something from scaring those children. I did. I got my teaching license and became a middle school teacher who defended literary choices above grade level on a regular basis. Soon, I had a room full of sixth-grade students, and they were so much older than third grade. I imagined they could handle much scarier works like Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

They can’t. I didn’t use any props, music, or lighting that time, but even my student teacher said I scared the crap out of her too.

Let me tell you about the last time. It happened the week after state testing, and I was on hall duty. A group of seventh-grade students asked if I knew a specific Langston Hughes poem. Of course I knew it! They had questions, and we talked about it at length. Then they asked me about a specific phrase. (I’m intentionally being cryptic here or I’ll go to jail.) Did I think the phrase was a simile, a metaphor, or personification?

“It’s none of those,” I answered.

They screamed with delight in agreement and then told me it was a question on the test, and that there was no right answer. I explained that I could be wrong and that I would ask the other teachers what they thought about that line. My whole department agreed that it was none of those. So, I went to the district Language Arts goddess, and she agreed it was none. Of course, I called the state testing office next, and I was immediately pulled from the classroom and needed a lawyer. Discussing literary elements in a Langston Hughes’ poem is illegal if it’s on the state test.

Do you think I’m still in education? Fuck no.

A lot has changed. There are nuns I admire, other people’s moms believe me, and I’m currently available for read-alouds.