My teacher called me a Slut
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In the 80s there didn’t seem to be any political correctness, and teachers could get away with a lot more than they do these days.
Yes, back then it was the norm to get the cane or even the ruler on the back of the hand! With parental consent, of course.
Those were the days when we had blackboards, not chalk-boards. In fact a teacher once threw a board duster at me, because I was talking in class. He then told me to go and sit in the store cupboard. I found a piece of chalk and entertained myself drawing on the walls while I was there.
I was quite a good student really and I respected the school authority. I was only a little rebellious on the inside, hence drawing on the walls with chalk and not pen.
But this one time I hit a teacher!
After mistaking me for a classmate, a teacher slapped me hard across the face as she said “Elle, I just told you to get back in line”!
It mustn't have been easy really, thinking about it, as nearly all the girls in the class had the same hairstyle and almost all looked the same. I reacted immediately and hit the teacher back. I quickly regretted it as this action led me straight down to the headmasters office.
The imprint of the teacher’s hand on my face was clearly visible, but after the teacher’s denial (coupled with fear — I bet), the headmaster told me that I had obviously hit myself.
Obviously.
Imagine if any of those events happened today.
It would be filmed and uploaded to a social media platform before you could say ‘Baba Green Sheep’. It would make the prime time news. I could have probably sued the teacher, earned myself a nice little college fund and had her struck off the register — forever! Ruin her life due to her never being able to work as a teacher again.
However, back then, I didn’t even tell my mother, for fear that she wouldn’t believe me. Oddly enough, the school did not report it to my parents either.
Nobody really saw any harm in a teacher slapping a kid. It was the norm destined to get them back on track and it seemed to work. The behavior in some lessons, where the teacher was feared most, would be impeccable, and we could actually do our schoolwork.
“Amanda! You sound like a common slut speaking like that!”
During break it was different, we would run, shout and swear, letting off all that pent up energy we had to restrain during the lessons. This was a good school I was in, the one I had been in previously was quite rough and I had been called posh. In this school I was determined to make a better impression and not be bullied, so much so that I got kicked out of my first lesson. That made the other kids think I was tough and cool. Nobody was going to mess with me!
Although I didn’t care much for swearing, one day I was strutting down the hallway with a friend and I let the ‘f’ word slip out. Maybe I was trying to impress, maybe I was trying to be like everybody else, I don’t know.
At the same time a teacher passed me on the stairwell and said, “Amanda! You sound like a common slut speaking like that!”
A strange thing happened inside my head.
Instead of lashing out at him verbally, like I had lashed out physically at the other teacher. I actually paid heed to what he said.
He was right.
I did sound like a tart and if I wasn’t careful, before long every other word that came out of my mouth would be the ‘f’ word — and lots of words come out of my mouth, so that would be a lot of ‘f’ words!
This teacher actually made me stop and think about my behavior and he actually cared enough to point it out to me.
I thank him for that.
I don’t like swearing as a rule and despite the so called ‘research’ that only intelligent people swear — I think I will just continue to take my teacher’s advice.
:)
