Teach for Hysteria: Another Asshole Moment Brought to You By Our Local Napoleon

So today was a free work day in ELA with my homeroom of little angels. When we started class there were so many requests for "can't we just..." that I decided to let everyone work on a project of their choice: revising their short stories, working on book projects, writing in their readers and writers notebooks, or just some good old fashioned reading. A group of girls got together and decided for their monthly literature project that they would present a scene from a play to the class. So far so good. They wanted to work out in the hallway. Not so good.

Ms. S: I dunno guys, I won't really be able to see you.

Leader Girl: We'll stand right by the back door! You can come check on us! Please! It's too crowded in here and everyone keeps coming to look at us! Please!

This is true, and plus, I trust them. I know that the last thing any of these girls would do is disappear up to the fifth floor and end up in a stairwell with an 8th grader. Still, I hesitate. What do I fear? The Napoleon of the Fourth Floor.

Yes, the man whose bitterness at being eye level with my collarbone is only surpassed by his need to establish an absolute power that corrupts absolutely. The man who feels that compliments lead to laziness and who works really hard to make sure he can find an error in any haystack or bulletin board. The man who is but a minion of the psycho CEO (aka principal) who is at that very moment, unbeknownst to me, ripping bulletin boards to shreds and throwing books from the library into a pile on the floor in the room across the hall before instructing the teacher to make the room of Wild Children "pick it up," and then leaving the teacher with a room of kids jeering "fuck you" at the door.

All of this of course leads to an atmosphere where everyone is constantly trying to stay out of trouble; well, everyone but the kids, that is. This is a place where the thought of having five perfectly well-behaved-all-the-time-girls just outside the door in an empty, and for now, peaceable hallway patrolled by a security guard becomes an existential crisis. You weigh the amount of trouble you can get in against the value of what might get you in trouble. You factor in a little bit of wtf and maybe-I'll-get-away-with-it, and make a decision.

Ms S: Okay, go ahead, but make sure you're right there.

Leader Girl: Yay! Okay!

Off to the hallway they go.

They do indeed stay by the back door, and I am indeed at the back door putting up some charts. I'm calling people up so that I can update the number of books they have read when Avid Reader Girl peeks out the back door.

ARG: Miss, where are the girls?

Ms S: They're not right there?

ARG shakes her head. I peek outside. ARG goes into the hallway and I come inside and meet her round the front. All five of them are gone! I'm panicked. Where could they have gone? They are so GOOD, I know they would never just leave! Just then, just my luck, I notice one of the wild children from across the hall sauntering in my direction. Ever since their ELA teacher put his hand through the glass of the door after nearly crushing another kid's arm in it, they have adopted me as a sort of okay adult to talk to.

Ms S: Wild Child!

WC: I'm going to get water miss (Saunters past and pushes the door to the fountain)

Ms S: No, Wild Child, please, I need to ask you a question. Come here a minute.

WC: (raises eyebrows)

Ms S: Tell me, have you seen any girls from my class -- Leader Girl, Hazel Contacts, Blondie, or maybe Tulip?

WC: Oh yeah, Miss. They in the Dean's office.

Ms S: Oh good, thank you Wild Child.

WC: It's all good. (Saunters on to water fountain)

Silly me, I actually think that maybe Napoleon saw them in the hallway and gave them a peaceful place to work. I can't imagine why no one told me, but lots of things around here don't make sense. I sit on this for about five more minutes and then, although I am convinced that Wild Child was telling me the absolute truth, I send the adventurous Dervish to check it out, just to make sure. She trots off down the hall, and a few moments later, the phone rings. It's Napoleon.

N: Ms. Soucouyant?

Ms S: Yes.

N: Those girls were working in the hallway?

Ms S: Yes.

N: Where were they?

Ms.S: Between the red double doors and the back door.

N: Well they weren't.

Ms S: Oh really? Where were they?

N: On the other side of the red doors.

Ms S: You mean in front of the front door?

N: Yes.

Ms S: Okay.

N: I'm sending them back.

Ms S: Okay. (still feeling like I am missing something here)

The girls come back, PISSED. Dervish whirls in. "Miss, I HATE him! He said, 'So, she finally noticed they were gone, huh?'

"What?"

"Yeah," Leader Girl chimes in. "We were there and we told him we were working and you had just checked on us five seconds ago and he said, 'Well come on then, let's see how long it takes until she misses you!'"

"Are you SERIOUS?"

"YES!"

Oh, great. I'm in the middle of a really big, really messy Zen koan. I wonder what will happen next, if anything, but apparently everyone gets caught up in making a big mess in the Wild Children room, and I am overlooked. For now.