It Can All Change In Five Minutes

I have severe major depression and a sister who is not good at getting organised/ready to leave on time.

We have a teacher at my school who I’ve always despised. He has an unspoken rule that he will lock students out of the class for five-ten minutes further when they are late.

I am five minutes late to his class (first period – 8:45 am) due to my sister throwing a tantrum. I knock on the door, and:

Teacher: “Was the bus late?”

Apparently, this is his only valid excuse for running late to class.

Me: “No, but…”

Teacher: “You can’t come in.”

He shuts the door in my face.

After bursting into tears, I decided that his unspoken rule of being left outside the classroom for five minutes when one attended late never actually stated one was required to wait outside the door to enter the room when he deigned to let the student in. 

So I wander off to the library to find something interesting to read.

Apparently, after he opened the door and found me missing, the school had to call my parents and explain they’d misplaced me and why. I was eventually ‘found’ and the teacher had the nerve to ask – in front of my parents and the principal:

Teacher: “Why didn’t you tell me the reason you were late?”

Me: “Because you didn’t let me say so.”

Teacher: “Why didn’t you wait outside the door?”

Me: “Because you didn’t say so, and I wasn’t going to waste valuable learning time that my parents pay for standing and staring at a door.”

My parents ripped them a new one, and the teacher didn’t lock anyone out of his classroom for at least the next seven years (so my younger brother tells me). 

It gave me great pleasure to get one up on such a hard-headed, infuriating teacher.