Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Killer B's

No. This isn't about the Houston Astros. This post is about a trio of high school teachers so mean and diabolical that you had to give them nickname. I was reminded of them when my sister in law posted the other day. Meet the Killer B's: business and typing teacher-Miss Brohard (Is it any guess what her nickname was?), Librarian-Mrs. Bosley, and finally the head witch and English teacher Miss (Man Hater) Bell. Sometimes the history and geography teacher Baeslack was included, but she was just certifiable. This is the woman that would switch from laughter to full out bawling in a millisecond all while reading from the history book. Like I said she was certifiably looney. As for the others, Macbeth never met witches like these.

First let us look at Miss Blowhard. First of all she was the typing teacher, and basically all typing teachers have a bug up their ass. How can typing teachers not be anal? I don't think I ever saw her laugh at anything except when she was holding her seance with the other Killer B's. I don't even what to know what they were taking joy in. Secondly, she lived a single life for a long, long, long time, which basically meant she wasn't a big fan of the male population. Every man was the devil in her eyes. Thirdly, she really looked like a witch, pointy nose, jet black hair, the whole deal. It was frightening. Luckily, I only had her for one class. I still have scars though. The fear every time her beady little eyes would peer deep into your soul. She would do that little head shake of shame, and then stick you in detention. She was the kind of teacher that would give you detention simply for standing when the bell rang.

Next we have the snitch of a librarian in Bosley. I still don't even know why we needed a librarian. Yes, we had a library containing books. But those books were never opened unless we were forced to during the "How to use a library" portion of our education. Our high school obviously didn't have a budget for the library. They were either donated by somebody's grandmother or stolen from various garbage cans. Her real job was to be the eyes of the head Killer B, Miss Bell. You see, Miss Bell was blind.

Now wait a minute. You are probably thinking, how I could possibly have a problem with a blind person. Look, I realize that a blind person's life has to be strictly controlled. Things have to be highly organized. I understand that. It's still no excuse to act the way she did. She too hated the male population. She hated them so much that she would grade down the guys. I'm not even going to use myself as an example. Hell I gave up once I got docked points for answering knife instead of dagger. After that and a few other questionable "wrong" answers, I just mailed it in. How did I "mail it in?" For my "How to" speech, I spoke on how to be a couch potato. My poem reading was something I picked out the second I was called up. Thank goodness she was blind. I don't think she liked that the poem was about a guy decomposing in his grave. It was a Christian high school. The only line I can remember is "The worms go in. The worms go out. The worms play pinochle on my snout." Yeah, definitely some classic literature. Back to my example. I will actually use class genius Craig. How smart is this guy? He's off designing government "things" that he can't talk about. This guy never got anything below an A- except maybe for gym class. He'd get an A on all her standardized tests, but on the essay questions she would always find ways to dock him points. Actually, I don't know a single guy in my class that ever got an A on one of her test. There were plenty of girls though that got A's. Then there was the whole revelation that she really graded you on her perception of you and not what you actually did. If she thought you were a C student you always got C's no matter how well you did. Then there was the whole week of detention I got for tapping my pen. Tapping my damn pen! I didn't even get a warning. Sorry, I didn't even want to get to Bell yet.

Anyway, Bosley was the eyes for Bell. Every twenty minutes you could count on seeing her peering through the door window. Which I can kind of understand because my class wasn't exactly the best behaved. Still, if you see someone cheating, I can see trying to deter that. But taking notes on who looked like they might be possibly doing something is going a little far. She worked really hard to "find" things we were doing wrong. One odd event I do remember is when half my class cheated on our final. How did she not see that? They were laying the answers in the isle and passing them around. Come on! Which makes me wonder how the grades varied so much. That brings us back to the Hecate of the coven, Bell. I never met a male student that liked her or a female student that didn't like her. Her favoritism was that clearly defined.

The thing is she really did frighten me. She would do that robotic tilt of the head when ever she heard a noise. Then hold it for an ungodly amount of time. I would actually freeze whenever she did that. I wouldn't even breathe till she moved her head again. She was the teacher in those "B" movies that always ends up being the alien. The kids know it, but nobody else believes them till students start disappearing. What do you think she fed her seeing eye dog? Yeah, I wouldn't have been suprised if her head kept turning. There was a reason she taught high school. The younger kids would be too scared to learn.

What makes it worse was she wasn't even that good of a teacher. She actually sucked, but that was par for the course at my school. Even though she sucked, she always received awards because she was blind. It's admirable how she was able to be independent with her disability, but that doesn't make her a good teacher.

I realize this sounds like simply a bitter kid letting out a few grudges that he should've put behind him a long time ago. Maybe I am. But I was basically a very well behaved kid. No, I really was. I swear! The only time I got in trouble was when it came to the Killer B's. In fact I didn't even give these three the Killer B nickname. The nickname actually came from a fellow English teacher...My Dad. Sigh, I love my Dad. I think Bell actually has it out for my Dad. I don't know why. He still apologizes for not getting me out of taking Bell for Junior English. I forgive you Dad. But I clearly haven't forgiven the Killer B's.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Just to put the record straight, Miss Bell didn't like ALL female students and ALL female students didn't like her. Specifically moi.

I admit that in school I had ocd. I was compulsively studious and refused to get anything but an A. All the other teachers loved me. (Except Mr. Pifer who told me to take a long walk off a short pier. I hate math so I didn't care.) So (and let the bitterness flow) when Miss Bell would grade my genius papers and essays and give them below par grades I was NOT happy. I was a B student in her eyes (ha!) because I hung out with Ben and your dad too much.

Since I didn't have a computer at home Ben was going to help me type and print everything out at his house. But the computer freaked out and wasn't printing things correctly and I was there until 2 in the morning. With Ben. Your dad went to sleep at some normal hour and wasn't involved at all in helping us. So the next day I turned in my paper and told Miss Bell I was going home and I wouldn't be taking the vocab quiz because I was up forever with the paper, blah, blah, blah. And I made the mistake of saying I was at Mr. Iten's house until 2. That got him called into the office and he still brings it up which I think is totally not cool and I told him so.
But I think it is generally true that she preferred female students as long as they were in no way connected to her enemies. My friend got an A for a paper that consisted of all simple sentences with NO real argument.

Ben says I should forgive, but it's so fun to tell these stories. People just can't believe stories about an evil blind teacher and students who threw bologna just out of reach of her guide dog so she would jerk its harness and yell at it. It's just too good.