Doesn’t Mean He Wasn’t a Jerk…

I just learned a former teacher died, and while I’ve had no contact with him in 48 years, I can still remember the way he made me feel.

He was my seventh-grade science teacher, and was also in charge of my third period study hall. One day, I apparently didn’t follow some rule—maybe I went to the bathroom or the library without a pass?—and he thought it such a grievous offence that he called me over to the desk and—publicly—told me I had to invent my own punishment.

I was 12 years old, standing in front of a room filled with 7^th to 12^th graders, and I didn’t know what to say.

He sat back in his chair, smirking, his arms folded across his chest.

I was NOT going to cry, so I blurted out that I’d write an essay about something that had to do with women: Sports? Voting rights? Literature? I don’t remember. What I DO remember is that the asshole read it out loud the next day in science class, only he replaced the words “women,” “woman,” and “girl” with “monkey.”

Twelve-year-old me melted in my chair as the boys laughed and laughed.

My early “adult male education” didn’t stop there. Another teacher (same school a year later) stared at my chest whenever he talked to me. I nicknamed him “Rat.”

When I was 14, I was wrestled to the ground when I told a male employee at my dad’s grocery store to shut up.

When I was 17, a police officer in Sioux Falls pulled me over (he said I’d run a red light, but I don’t think so) and said he’d “do me” if he wasn’t married. That same year, another officer pulled me over, on a back country road, for a burned out taillight and said he’d let you go if I gave him a blowjob.

Who in the hell raised those guys?

I’m sorry/not sorry the science teacher is dead. I have no feelings about his death or his “loved ones” whatsoever. But I know deep down that what he did to me, he did to other girls. His macho postering—while I understand now (as an adult) is a sign of insecurity and blah blah blah—fed young boys that sense of superiority. Not all of them, but I know a few from those days who still behave like they’re god’s gift to women.

I wrote this piece quickly (and it’s missing a lot of details, obviously), and I hesitated publishing it, but you know what? Moving on from abuse doesn’t mean the past doesn’t still bite us in the ass sometimes! We get to say it, #metoo, even years later!

Thanks for listening. And if my experience triggered your own, I apologize. Just please, don’t hold it in.