Mrs. S Gets an End of Year Surprise

It was the end of my freshman year in high school, and I had spent the entire year of algebra one goofing off in the back with a fellow trouble maker, Spens. We seldomly listened to a word the poor woman said all year. We didn’t even care to wonder what our grades were like. We cared more about who could crack the other one up more than just about anything for that last hour of our school day.  On this particular day, a friend who had the same desk as me a few class periods earlier had hidden a note to me underneath the desk. I found it and drew pictures of inside jokes we shared. These included Quasimodo, of whom I had developed a stellar impersonation.

As I was reviewing my drawings with smug satisfaction, Spens snatched the note out of my hand and proceeded to taint my art with raunchy captions and perverted additions to the anatomy of Quasimodo. My face went red and giggled erupted out of me against my will. I suppose my apple red cheeks caught Mrs. Stevenson’s eye, because she immediately marched down my aisle and held her outstretched hand out for the note.

Now, one of our favorite jokes that year had to do with the fact that Mrs. Stevenson was losing her hair. To compensate for the loss, she teased her hair and sprayed it into a white woman’s afro. When she stood at the front of the classroom, writing on the overhead projector, her skull formed an opaque shadow crowned by a slightly transparent halo of hair and aquanet.

As she marched back to my seat, I could do nothing but fix my eyes on her suburban fro and wonder what the hell I was going to do with my sordid note. When she came to a stop, hand still outstretched, my arm cranked back, and the note flew straight for her transparent mat of hair.

I felt my eyes grow wide as hers did the same, and she laid ahold of my wrist. She snatched me out of my chair as I began spewing apologies and excuses. The class sat in shocked silence as she and I flew down to the principal’s office.

“Mrs. Stevenson, I am so sorry. I don’t know why I did that. It just happened. I don’t know what came over me. I really didn’t mean to!”

“Emily, I have been trying to teach you all year long, and you have done nothing to make my job any easier.”

That shut me up. The receptionist in Mr. Riefkhol’s office sat staring at us with a look of amusement and curiosity.

“May I have two discipline forms,” Mrs.