So after five long years of (mostly) unhappiness attempting to teach those snot-nosed tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-graders (literally snot-nosed, by the way; I mean, you expect it with elementary school kids, but high schoolers?), I gave up my summer vacations and went to work at the first college that offered me a job.  I was hired by a brand new career college that offered Associates' Degree programs in eighteen months or certificate programs in nine.  After working in the library and computer lab for about six months, I was asked to teach a low-level math class.  Realizing "College Instructor" would look great on my résumé, I accepted the position immediately.  (When my boss first asked me if I would be interested in teaching, I said "Sure" and I asked if it would affect my pay; she answered that question with a laugh and said "No.  If anything, we should take some of your pay away from you."  She laughed some more, and said, "But we wouldn't do that to you.")  I thought to myself, This won't be too bad.  These students are paying a lot of money to be here.  They'll be motivated enough to come every day and not cause any scenes like Ronald, Donald, the cranked out Romeo & Juliet, or even B.  Can you guess where I'm going yet?

I taught one class--four days a week for two hours each day.  There were six students in the class: five women (ages 18-35) and one man (age 29--the dude was born one month before me).  Needless to say, the lone fellow was a bit of an outsider.  He claimed to have been in the Navy for nine years (our Financial Aid officer said it was really five), but he acted like a 12-year-old who had been kicked out of military school.  He was fairly bright; one day the class was discussing some of their favorite high school reads, and he named Death of a Salesman, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Grapes of Wrath (three of my personal favorites).  He was a pretty decent math student, but he had some attendance issues.  The terms at this college are only five weeks long, so the classes are very quick and intense.  If you miss a day, you miss a lot; he missed several.  When he was there, he was constantly twitching, muttering to himself, or slapping his own face, and this was his test-taking behavior.  He was infamous for walking around the halls and peeping into the classroom windows of our upstairs campus when he wasn't supposed to.  He often had the look of somebody who had smoked too much dust in the parking lot before coming to class.  Oh, one more thing: like the malicious farter, his name began with the letter B.  There was a famous TV bear who shared his name, in fact.

On the Monday of the fifth week, he was asked to come up to the board to work out a problem that he had missed on a recent quiz.  He stood in front of the white board and instead of doing what he was asked, he started yammering about how he had screwed up this problem because his addition was wrong.  He was going on and on for about a minute when one of his classmates spoke up: "Just do the problem," somebody said.  Those were her only words, and the dude snapped.  He turned around and started screaming at the person he assumed had spoken: "Don't you tell me what to do!  This is bullshit!  You cant talk like that behind my back!"  These were only a few of the things he had to say.  As soon as his tirade began, I jumped up and told him that he could not speak to his classmates like that and to get out of the classroom.  After a couple more minutes of his steaming and yelling, he finally left.  I told him to take his stuff with him; he refused.  I threw it all together and set it in the hallway, and he approached me, looking as if he was about to start crying.  "You don't know what it's like to have people talk behind your back," he explained. "That girl's been talkin' 'bout me every day!  I don't have to put up with it!  That was bullshit!  I didn't do nothin' wrong!"  I told him he was not welcome back in my classroom if he was going to talk to us like that and left him in the hallway.

Once class had ended, I returned to my desk in the library and saw the voicemail light flashing on my phone.  Guess who had called and left a three-minute message, continuing to scream things like "I'm a man!  I know when somebody's talkin' behind my back!  You always take their side!  We're supposed to be on the same team!  This is bullshit!"  I promptly saved the message and let the proper administrators hear it.  (I found out a few days later that on his way out the door that morning, he had actually asked our Facilities Manager which car was mine, because he wanted to "leave a note" for me!)  But the real fun started as soon as I got home that evening: my wife asked me, "Can you explain why there's a message from some woman canceling a lunch date?"  I listened to the saved message several times and finally realized it was the same student.  He actually looked up my home phone number (which was listed in the White Pages--I know, Im a naïve idiot sometimes) and called it as soon as he got home from school.  He left a message, attempting to speak in a high-pitched woman's voice, saying: "Hi, Morgee.  Sorry, but I can't make it to lunch today.  See you later, sexy!"  See you later, sexy?!  Can you imagine how fucked up that is to hear come out of a male student's poorly-disguised voice?!  Like he thought he was going to get revenge by ruining my marriage?!  I explained what had happened earlier that day to my wife and she understood.

And finally: can you imagine being an almost thirty-year-old man and playing such a childish prank on a teacher with whom you had a disagreement?  "I'm a man!" he claimed.  Yeah, right.  He was lucky I didn't treat him like the "man" he was and sock him in the face the next day at school.  (He wasn't allowed back in my classroom after all of that.)

 I quickly learned that teaching college wasn't going to be a whole lot different than teaching high school.

            During the second semester of my fifth and final year of teaching high school English, something that had never happened to me in the classroom finally happened.  By the time this event occurred, I truly believed I had seen it all, but I was wrong.  And the worst thing about it was the administrations response to the following event:

            Through that final year, I taught a junior-level English class during first period.  For some reason, there were some very immature boys in the class, and they often made things a lot more difficult than they needed to be.  I will call two of the boys Ronald and Donald.  Ronald was a pudgy, pasty, greasy-haired and -faced white kid.  He thought he was a hilarious comedian; I thought hed have a slight chance at being a Z-grade Chris Farley at best.  Donald was his friend from way back when they first discovered the joys of playing doctor in ones clubhouse.  (I dont know this as a fact; thank God neither of them ever wrote about it in an assignment.)  Donald had grown into a better physical appearance and he had a little more charm with the ladies.  Perhaps Ronald was bitterly jealous of Donald and took out his frustrations against his former best pal in class to remind him of what once was.

            One morning, Donald was childishly playing Keep the Pen Away from Ronald by himself.  Other students found amusement in this game, but they didnt bother asking for Ronalds pen; they were far too passive for such an immature activity.  Ronald, of course, was becoming more and more upset as the seconds passed (the events in this paragraph happened in a span of about ten seconds, by the way) and retaliated by demanding, Give me my pen, Donald.  The tormentor, as you can probably guess, was not about to made into any kind of bitch, so he refused to give it back.  The demand was repeated about four or five timesin a voice much more befitting of a whiny little six-year-old bratbefore I finally said, Ronald, stop acting like such a baby.  Donald, give him the pen back.  Grow up, you two.  Apparently Ronald didnt like being compared to a baby, because his immediate response after I spoke was Ill kill you, Mr. Giles.  

            This is not a nice thing to hear someone tell you at your job, you know?  Needless to say, I was completely shocked that this fat, zitty kid just said this to me.  I told him to get out of the classroom; fortunately, he had realized the severity of what he just said and did just as I instructed.  Everybody else in the class was completely flabbergasted; they couldnt believe he said it, either.  I called the office and asked them to send a security officer immediately, while I quickly filled out a referral form giving details of what just happened and what was said.  When I stood outside with Ronald, waiting for the security guard to arrive, I could tell he was scared, and I was glad.  I wanted that dipshit to feel horrible about what he just said to me.  A couple minutes after I went back in the class, enough time had passed for the students to start making comments about what would happen to Ronald; several believed hed go to prison.  I wasnt hoping for anything like that; I knew the kid wasnt being serious.  

            During second period, which was my free period, I received a call from the Vice-Principal who was dealing with Ronald.  He asked if everything I wrote was exact, and I assured him it was.  He then dropped the first bomb by telling me, Well Ronald here tells me he said I want to keel you, like a boat, with a nervous laugh.  Was this fuckhead really trying to make a joke about this kids death threat?  I was so furious at that unnecessary attempt at humor that I dont even remember what happened during the rest of that phone call.  

By the end of second period, Ronald came back to my classroom, looking like he just got caught touching himself outside of the girls locker room.  I thought to myself, All right!  How longs he suspended from my class?  A week?  Two?  He handed me a folded piece of notebook paper and said, Here.  Im sorry that I caused a distraction in class.  It wont happen again.  I opened up the piece of paper and saw a poorly-written apology for what happened.  Did the Vice-Principal really make him write a note as his punishment for telling a teacher hed kill him?!  Yes, he did.  That was when I realized I just wasnt cut out for this shit.

            Ah, six months have passed since writing my last piece about our lovely little hare lipped friend, B.  I've recovered slowly and licked my wounds...the conclusion can now be told.

            It was the last day of school.  The farting incident (see TTTT No.3 if you're confused) had occurred a few months prior.  B had been out of my class for about four months.  Harassment had continued in the hallways--vicious name calling on his part, mostly--and the school's administration continued to do absolutely nothing about it, still claiming that we were the only thing positive in this young man's life.  Whatever.

            On the last day of school, hardly any students showed up.  Finals had ended the day before, so the only ones that were there were the ones with parents lame enough to demand one more day of free babysitting before summer vacation started.  B's parents were certainly not in this category.  Oh no, he showed up with a much more sinister agenda.

            The last day of school was a minimum day, so the class periods were only about thirty-five minutes.  At about 10 o'clock that morning, I took a stroll down to the attendance office to turn in some end-of-the-year paperwork.  When I arrived back in my classroom, a lone student who was sitting in a desk told me that there was just someone in the room looking for me.  I asked if it was a teacher, and she said no, it was definitely a student.  I asked her to describe him.  She said he was very short, pale, and skinny.  I felt like Jerry Seinfeld uttering "Newwwmannnn" except it was B's name in place of the fat mailman's.  She also told me that he was carrying a video camera.

            An hour later, I walked somewhere else on campus to take care of some sort of business.  On my way back to the classroom, I saw B walking towards me.  Here we go, I thought to myself, one last hurrah on the last day of school.  Was he going to fart on me one more time?  Cuss me out?  Maybe spit on me?!  Not wanting to make a scene, I kept walking towards my classroom.  As we passed, he said loudly, "See ya, fag!"  Enough was enough.  I reacted in one of the worst ways possible:

            "Fuck you, B!" I shouted (of course I actually used his real name).  After the words came out of my mouth, I remembered the warning the young lady had given me earlier.  I saw Bs friend following behind, like some sort of obedient seeing-eye bitch, camera in hand, recording the whole thing.  Shit, I thought.  I realized it was the wrong move when I heard B and his follower hooting and shouting, "We got that on tape!" over and over.

            When I went to the front office at 12:30 to turn in my classroom keys and sign out for the summer, one of the vice principals (the very one who--a few months before--told me we were keeping B from committing suicide) told me to get in the principal's office.  What followed was an outrage: B had turned in the camera, he told the principal that I had been treating him like this all year long and he just now caught in on tape, and I was told that I was in danger of losing my credential for speaking to a student in that manner.  The principal was literally screaming at me and all I could do was nothing.  Why the fuck did she side with this little piece of shit?!

            Needless to say, I ended up very drunk that afternoon with a group of teacher friends and let off a lot of steam in front of quite a few people.  Thank Christ they were there to listen.  I ended up teaching at a different school in the same district the next fall, but I was told by several friends that B wasnt allowed back at our old school.  I'll never understand why they decided to kick him out after I was gone.  Apparently all of his harassment and name-callings finally got him in trouble.  But why in the hell didn't it happen when I was teaching there?!

Have you ever been farted on before?  And no, I don't mean someone sitting next to you on the couch who lets one go.  And I'm definitely not talkin' about your significant other passing gas on you while you sleep.  I mean it: Have you ever been maliciously farted upon by another person? 

One year I had a young male student whose name began with the letter "B."  I'm making a point not to use real names in these things, so I'll just say his name was a very common "B" name, and it wasn't Bill.  B was a very short boy.  He was five feet tall if he was lucky.  I happened to be closing in on almost two feet taller than that, so you can imagine he didn't much care for me since Day One.  I weighed in at about 225 pounds that year, and B was lucky to have been half that.  The guy was a tiny little runt, and he knew it.  He also happened to have the worst harelip I've ever seen on a person.  You can imagine this kid had problems he'd been dealing with his entire life.

At the beginning of the school year he made it clear from the very first day that he wasn't interested in doing any work.  If he actually did something, he would do a terrible, shitty job and write in some of the worst handwriting I'd ever seen.  (This was my fourth year, so I had seen a lot of bad handwriting by then.)  He came in late constantly.  He swore loudly in class.  Kids saw him as a complete outsider and loser; he clearly had no friends or allies in the class.  I even tried to take an interest in this kid for about the first month.  I would come down hard on the people making fun of him class.  I tried talking to this kid about his only interest in life, skateboarding.  It was when B started swearing at me that I knew this kid didn't want to be helped.

B was written up and sent to the office on many occasions.  Written referrals and office visitations and phone calls home didn't faze him.  Phone calls home only ended with the grandmother crying about how her grandson was up all night because Daddy got outta jail and he was bangin on the door lookin for him and threatenin to kick his ass.  These were terrible stories and more than likely true.  This kid really looked like he came from a fucked-up family environment.  The grandmother once told me that I was one of the teachers that B actually liked.  I was shocked to hear that, because this little prick was cussing me out in front of everyone in the class on a regular basis.

B had one of the most hideous, malicious laughs I've ever heard on a person.  It involved this deep, guttaral "heh-heh" kind of thing mixed with a higher pitched squeal.  It was almost like a horrifying combination of the sounds of Beavis AND Butthead.  After about a month or two, he got to the point where he would laugh at every threat I'd make against him.  He knew he found a way to disturb me, and he took advantage of it.  I swear, I held myself back from hitting him in the face more than I'd like to admit.

After a constant tide of Administrative Referrals, one of the VPs finally decided it would be best to remove him from my class and put him in another teacher's.  I was grateful for this decision finally being made.  About a month after he was transferred, I was walking through the halls one day after school.  B was hanging out on campus with some of his "friends"--namely little skater runts like him that he seemed able to boss around.  As I walked by the group, B stood atop a bench and loudly proclaimed, "I'm as tall as this fucker!" 

When I turned in the referral for that incident, the VP (the same one who took him out of my class) told me this behind closed doors:  "You see, Mr. Giles, if it weren't for us here at school, B probably would have killed himself by now."  She truly believed that we were the only good thing in his life, and she was probably right.  But we weren't keeping him from killing himself!  He was way too selfish!

The second-to-last time I ever had to really hold myself back from beating that little shit down was at least a month after the bench incident.  The bell signalling the end of lunch had rung.  I was walking up a hill to get to my classroom.  B saw me coming, got up from where he was sitting, and started walking towards me.  As he walked by me, he made sure to get up real close to me, turn at about a 90 degree angle, aim his (thankfully clothed) ass at me, and blow a mighty wind. 

Smartly, he kept walking after the "walk-by farting" or whatever he called it, because I just stopped in my tracks and clenched my fists.  My face turned bright red and I turned towards B and his friends, who were--of course--laughing loudly.  "That's right!  Keep walking, you filthy little shit!"  I yelled.  Perhaps I overreacted, but every other male teacher I told about the incident agreed: they would have taken a swing at him.

So, to answer my original question: Yes, I have been farted upon.  And it was pathetic. 

Warning: Read Number One before you read this one!  This one will make more sense that way!

So, do you remember the threatening boyfriend from my last entry?  Remember how I wrote about him threatening to kick my ass "in the parking after school"?  Well, he made those ridiculous threats on one of the final days of the school year.  He was booted from the school and sent to one of the alternative schools during the final week of classes.  This kind of thing usually didn't happen, but I guess it will if you threaten a teacher.

Anyways, I had to go to a meeting during the following summer break at the district office with one of my Vice Principals, the boyfriend's mother, and presumably the student.  I needed to be there to give my side of the story.

Thank Christ the VP was as supportive as she was that day at that meeting.  (I'll write another entry soon about the times she wasn't as supportive.)  The mother was furious that her son should be punished for threathening me.  She was livid about her son going to the continuation school he was enrolled at, because he had "special needs" that they just couldn't handle at the continuation school.  He actually lived about ten or twelve miles (maybe more) away from the school I worked at.  His mom wanted him going to my school because we had the right teachers for her boy.  This is understandable; he was certainly a young man with some serious issues and learning disabilities.  As I wrote in the previous entry, he looked like a real meth freak, though, and I'm sure this chemical dependency probably didn't help his situation.

But I lost any sympathy for this woman when she started going off like it was my fault that any of this had happened.  She claimed that I had wrongfully searched her son's girlfriend and I had no right to do so.  When we got her off of that pedestal, she dropped the bomb:

"My son is eighteen years old," she stated, "and he's able to talk to you however he wants!"

This happened over four years ago, but I clearly remember her saying this exact quote.  She believed that since he was technically an adult, he should be able to threaten other adults and talk to them however he damn well pleases.  What the hell was Mom smoking?

Eventually the VP and I made her realize that as a student, he is most certainly not allowed to speak to teachers or students in this fashion.  It was ultimately decided that the boy would attend one of the continuation schools.  Mom began to threaten legal action, but nothing like that ever came about.

The last time I heard about this guy was the following Winter, when one of his former teachers told me that one of his friends told her that the guy had been recently arrested and was in the city jail.  What for, you may ask?  Allegedly he was "playing around" with a crossbow and accidently shot someone with it.

Nice.  Let this be a lesson to you all: Don't mix methamphetamines and crossbows.  Someone's bound to get hurt.

"I'll kick yer ass in the parking lot after school, man," the young man told me in all seriousness.  He wasn't a student of mine, but he was a student's insanely protective boyfriend.  Not that I had made a pass at his girlfriend or anything like that. 
At the end of the 2000-2001 school year, a girl in my sixth period English 11 class had her backpack on her desk.  The bell had just rung and I was walking around the room checking homework at the students' desks.  When I passed this young lady's desk, I could clearly see a pack of Marlboros sticking out of her backpack's front pouch.  She wasn't even trying to hide them; they were in clear view to me and anybody else in a twenty-five-foot radius.  This girl had been a real bitch with me all year, so I was happy to find something to bust her on.
"I'll take this," I said as I whisked up the pack of smokes.  The girl, of course, freaked out.
"You can't do that!" she cried, acting like I had no right to confiscate her cherished loot.  I explained that it was a major offense to have cigarettes on your person at a public high school.  After a few moments, she calmed down and asked me if she could have the box back so she could throw it away.  I had to tell her that it wasn't going to be that easy for her to get away with this.
I finally got a security officer to the room.  I had been holding on to the evidence the whole time without looking inside the pack.  When the officer arrived, I told the student to pick up her stuff and come outside with us.  She got her last words in to me--"Fuck you, Asshole!"--as she made her perp walk out the door.  Many of the students were impressed by her goodbyes.
Outside, I gave the officer the cigarette pack and he openend it up.  There were no cigarettes!  It was an empty box!  She was going to get herself into all of this trouble over an empty pack of cigarettes!  Good thing I'm not the detective, because the officer looked a little deeper into the pack and found gold: a baggie with a little bit of weed inside. 
This stupid teenage girl kept her pot hidden in a cigarette pack that she lets fall out of her backpack while a teacher stands at her desk!  Ha!  Busted!  People that careless deserve to be caught!
So a couple days later, this girl is no longer allowed in my class, but they let her finish the year off by doing work for my class in the office.  Students in the hallway (and students who were a witness to everything) tell me that it wasn't fair how I "searched her bag without permission."  Every time I see her on campus, she does the right thing by keeping her mouth shut.  But then I ran into her boyfriend one day, a major SPED (Special Ed. student) with what appears to be a strong liking for smoking stuff in crystal form.
"You better watch your back, man," he also tells me that day on campus.  I reported his verbal threats immediately and he ended up being booted from the school.
What a cute couple, eh?  One can only hope they've both destroyed their reproductive organs through STDs and drug abuse.