When I was in Middle school (age thirteen, back at the start of the millennium), we had a math teacher who was… special.

She was a fairly young woman (about thirty-five) who never arrived on time, had below-zero patience, and the teaching abilities of a mousepad. I was never a math genius, but I was still better than my friends, who struggled a lot and would have needed a more one-on-one approach.

This teacher hated my friends for the simple fact that they asked about everything because they didn’t understand. She just resorted to telling them to shut up, or plain ignoring them.

Around November, we were having some sort of final, and when the grades came… it was strange. I got a ten, and one of my friends had a three (A+ and F, for the Americans).

Friend: “I… don’t get it. I’m bad, but not that bad.”

Me: “And I’m not that good.”

Friend: “May I see your exam? I want to compare.”

We put together both sheets, and they were identical. We hadn’t cheated, but for some magical coincidence, we did exactly the same steps and method despite being on opposite sides of the classroom.

Friend: “Well, one of us is straight-up graded wrong. I’ll take it to the teacher to see what’s wrong.”

So he went into the classroom, talked to the teacher, and even though she had two identical exams with different grades in front of her, she maintained that it was right. So obviously, my friend went to the director, and the next day, his parents came.

Next week comes…, and the teacher is no more.

Me: “Hey, [Friend]. Where’s the teacher? What happened at last week’s meeting?”

Friend: “Oh, I thought I told you… They fired her in front of my parents, and I have a ten (A+) now.”

Me: “What?! How?”

Friend: “Well, they all sat, my mom demanded answers, the director showed her the exams and asked what happened, and she just said, ‘answers don’t matter, one is stupid and the other is smart, so the smart will get extra graded, and the stupid will be punished.””

Me: “She… called you stupid in front of her boss AND your parents?”

Friend: “Honestly, firing her was the peaceful solution. According to my mom, it was mere seconds away from first-degree murder.”

My daughters’ middle school (grades six to nine, ages twelve to fourteen) got a new principal. He’s stricter than the previous one. For example, he instituted a no cell phone policy and a no backpack policy (both would be left in lockers or a staff-attended storage room).

The former I thought made sense because my daughters had told me how distracted their classmates often are (and my daughters share a flip phone anyway; they do the same extracurriculars, and neither is old enough to drive), but the latter confused me, and I wasn’t sure it had been totally thought out. I asked the new principal about it at the school’s open house, shortly before the school year started.

Me: “Hi, welcome to the school! I like your no cell phone policy; it makes a lot of sense with the different research I’ve read, especially [particular book about teen mental health].”

Principal: “I read the same book, and that’s a huge part of why the rule is in place.”

Me: “I’m confused about the backpack policy, though. Can you explain that one?”

Principal: “That’s just a matter of logistics. There are so many students enrolled that it’s hard for them to fit through the hallways during passing periods if they have backpacks on.”

Me: “Ah, I see. But… what about students with medical devices, like inhalers? Or the approximately third of your students who menstruate and will need to change a pad or tampon during the school day?”

The principal’s eyes went wide for just a fraction of a second, just long enough for me to be pretty sure he hadn’t thought about that.

Principal: “Oh, medical needs. Yes, of course; students can have a small bag or purse for carrying things like that.”

And a few hours later, there was an email “clarifying” that students were allowed to carry small bags for things like pens and pencils, pads and tampons, and medical devices. I’m glad I asked!

Our class is reading the Diary of Anne Frank in middle school, aloud as a class over the course of a few weeks.

We get to the part where they celebrate Hanukkah. One of my classmates blurts out loud:

Classmate: “Wait, are they Jewish?”

I am working with a student after school for an extra math session.

Me: “Okay, so then we half the forty, which is…”

Student: “Zero!”

I thought I had misheard him, so I asked him to repeat it.

Student: “Half of forty is zero, right?”

I corrected him and moved on.

Later, in the teachers’ lounge, another math teacher told me:

Teacher: “I know exactly what he did. He split the number in half vertically. Half of forty is four, and the other half is zero.”

Me: “Okay, I know we’re not supposed to say this, but that is beyond stupid. It’s so incredibly stupid I would never have ever, ever, thought that THAT is what he was doing.”

Teacher: “How long have you been teaching?”

Me: “A year.”

Teacher: “That’s why. Give it time. Some of these kids, God bless ’em, but if brains were dynamite, they couldn’t even blow their nose. The dumb… it creeps up on you…”

I try to stay a little more optimistic than some of my more seasoned coworkers, but d***, it does get harder every year!

It’s me, the author of this story, with a sort of comical one from the same school year. It’s how I ended up meeting one of my best friends during that year before I moved.

Partway through the school year, we got a new transfer student in my class. I’ll call her S. Now, for a bit of context, I was a bit on the short side and chubby (5′ even, or about 152cm, and about 120lbs, or 54kg), a bookish goody-two-shoes who preferred books and drawing over sports and socializing, and as mentioned before in a previous story, I’m autistic, so I was a prime target for bullying

Within two days of her being in our class, S had singled me out as a target. It was awful. S was nearly twice my size and stood a good head and a half taller than me, so I couldn’t fight back in any way. Among other things, she stole my clothes while I was changing in the locker room and ran to the other side of the gym, and I couldn’t go after her because I was in my underwear, and she pinned me up to the lockers by my throat more than once because I tried to tell her off. Teachers wouldn’t do anything more than a slap on the wrist, and when she did get in trouble, she knew it was me and doubled down on her bullying.

One day, I had been in the sixth-grade English classroom during lunch because I had volunteered to help my teacher rearrange our desks to make room for our upcoming lesson project (writing impromptu scripts and making performances). The desks were arranged in two rows on either side of the classroom, leaving a narrow walkway between the two rows so the students in the front rows could get to their desks.

While I was finishing up, I’d stepped into one of these walkways to help write the lesson plan on the board, and my teacher stepped out… and S stepped in, seeing me by myself, and decided to trap me in that little walkway by getting directly in front of me in such a way that I couldn’t even move the desks to get out of the way.

I don’t remember exactly what was said, pretty sure S was taunting me and trying to goad me into doing something. What I do remember, however, is that I was getting pretty tired of her bullying me, so I braced against the wall behind me for a moment and threw myself forward.

According to my dad, I have linebacker shoulders (straight and wide) and I tackled S halfway across the classroom to get her out of my way. I don’t know how I managed that, I just know that I did, and by some blessing, I didn’t get in trouble for it. My teacher came back in right before the tackle, and saw how S had me pinned in, so she vouched for me.

I thought it was over, but the following day during recess, S decided to pin me in again, this time looming over me while I was sitting with my back to a railing. She was furious with me because she had gotten caught red-handed in bullying me, and I’m not sure what she was planning to do. Thankfully, one of the teachers saw her and yelled at her to back off, which gave me an opportunity to run, bolting into the field.

In my previous story, I mentioned my asthma. Being that I was already out of shape and asthmatic, there was no way I was going to actually get away from S, but maybe the prey animal instinct kicked in or something, and I hoped that someone would notice that something was wrong. Sure enough, she caught up quickly, and the next thing I knew, she tackled me right back, slamming full-force into my back and sending me tumbling head over hind-end through the grass for several feet. Somehow, I landed sitting upright.

You could hear a pin drop in the grass. The entire sixth-grade class stopped what they were doing and stared at me and S, because S had tackled me hard enough to possibly hurt me. Perhaps they’d finally realized just how serious things were? I don’t really know. My mind was still playing catch-up with what had just happened, and one of my other friends ran over to make sure I was okay and to help me up.

After the initial shock wore off, I did the only thing I could think I could do… I laughed.

I started laughing my eleven-year-old butt off. I don’t know why, but it just ended up being completely hysterical to me. Of all the things S could do, she just tackled me and sent me rolling like a bowling ball!

The rest of the day is a bit fuzzy after that. I remember going to the nurse to make sure I wasn’t hurt, then to the principal’s office in case I wanted to make a proper complaint. I don’t remember much else. I don’t even remember if S got brought to the office.

The next day, S found me in the hall at my locker. I had braced for the worst… but she apologized, and ended up laughing. Apparently, my laughing after she tackled me like that made me seem a lot tougher than I looked, because she’d tried to actually cause some sort of harm and I laughed it off. It caused her to end up developing a strange sort of respect for me, because no one was brave or crazy enough to laugh at something like that.

The rest of the year, she and I were actually great friends. She came to me for help on our classwork because her grades were slipping, and other bullies weren’t exactly jumping at the bit to go after their old perfect target with S in my corner. We ended up actually bonding, making it pretty sad when I moved and had to transfer out, causing us to fall out of touch. Sometimes I look back on those days and wonder how she’s doing.