Sub-Substitute

One day, while in fifth grade, we have a substitute teacher. She gets through most of the morning okay, although she misspells at least one word every time she copies our teacher’s instructions onto the whiteboard. But then lunchtime rolls around.

At our school, there are multiple half-hour lunch periods, staggered at 15-minute intervals, and each class is assigned three lunches. Our class has the 12 pm, 12:15, and 12:30 lunch times, which we get to pick at the beginning of each day, and the rest of the 12-1 lunch block we can get out games and crafts and socialize.

Our substitute teacher doesn’t believe us about lunch. She tries to make all of us go at once, which would make the hall monitors and cafeteria workers angry. We try explaining it to her, and  show her the popsicle sticks with names and how they fit into slots on the lunch board on the wall, but she just grows more and more unreasonable.

Finally, she tells one side of the classroom to go to lunch, my side of the room to read silently, and tells anyone who objects to shut up. We cautiously pull out books from our desks and the bookshelves, while the substitute sits down at the teacher’s desk and glares at her written instructions. After only a minute, she lets out a frustrated “UGH!”, gets up, and leaves the classroom without a word.

When she doesn’t return a few minutes later, our half of the class decides that the best thing is to tell the principal what is going on. All fifteen of us walk together into the front office, much to the surprise of the school’s secretary, and explain what has happened.

Turned out, our substitute teacher had left the school, gotten into her car, and driven away without a single word to anybody. Our principal called up the school system headquarters and the substitute was blacklisted from ever teaching in the county again. We were told that we weren’t in any trouble, and one of the guidance counselors acted as our teacher for the remaining three hours of school.