Priests and Educators in anticlimatic

I can’t stand either of them.

Yet I have been forced, mostly against my will, to deal with plenty of both over the course of my life. Something I don’t particularly wish upon anyone.

I don’t know where my anti-authoritarian tendencies began, exactly- maybe just as a response to my controlling mother and inherently eccentric disposition, but having to deal with Priests and Teachers certainly didn’t help.

First of all, a PSA: these are not your kids. The words “I’m mad” do not belong in your vocabulary. You’re an adult. They’re kids. Grow up.

Especially in the goddamn 80s and 90s and even 2000s, before kids all had screen-time-brain-rot, and were mostly somewhat well adjusted functional kids. Why are you taking your control issues out on other people’s children? I ask you.

I want to get into some details, but a shorter list would be my positive experiences with the like, so I aught to begin there. Because I don’t mean to imply that just because 90% of my experiences with priests and teachers has been negative, that ALL of them are bad seeds. Not the case. There were a few King Arthurs in my life that managed to draw the sword from the stone, and the one thing they all have in common is that I disliked them initially.

But they grew on me. Monica grew on me. She was cold and mean, attractive Italian, always in black pointy toe heels with black hair that was short, but long enough to cover her eyes. She had a natural class and grace to her that was constant and measured, and what felt cold initially felt more like boundaries and respect as time went on.

My guidance counselor grew on me as well, though I’m not sure if he counts as a “teacher.” He was married, but obviously gay. Boomer. Sal from Mad Men kind of a gent. I remember he called me into his office one day, for some reason, and we had a bit of a moment. I don’t remember the details but I remember feeling suddenly comfortable hanging out with and confiding in this guy, and ever after I found myself defending him against other students poking fun when he wasn’t around. He took his own life the year after I graduated, and I still think about him often.

Who else? The History teacher that had me read Citizens Soldiers and meet him for coffee at his house on a June morning one day to talk about it, in order to pass me so I could graduate (something he did NOT have to do, but chose to) makes the list.

My Preschool teacher was delightful.

Kindergarten teacher was a Nun, and a mean one at that. She was somewhat traumatizing. There was a year when she needed someone to play an angel in some church pageant, and somehow drafted me into the role in the 11th hour despite the fact that I was not about stage life at all. She forced me into this horrific angel costume she made on the spot out of paper, and sent me up on stage with no clue what I was doing, surrounded by a bunch of kids whose parents spent weeks making lovely angel costumes with flowing robes. I had this stiff block of paper crinkling all around me everywhere I walked.

I’m not sure my ego has ever recovered.

In second grade I had just finished writing a poem that involved a lot of butt wiggling and farting I do believe, and the teacher snatched it off my desk and read it aloud to the class. I’m sorry, but that’s a dick move, to the core. Number one, that is MY poem. You do not have the right to 1) steal it, and then 2) broadcast it to the world (class). Not only did he violate my creative privacy, but he shamed me for having the audacity to be creative in the first place.

In fifth grade we were handed very important tests, midterms or some such, and I couldn’t remember if we could use pen or had to use pencil for the little Os we had to fill in. So I raised my had to ask. She ignored me. Although she didn’t specify if we could use pen OR pencil, she mentioned at some point that we weren’t allowed to ask questions about the test itself. But all I had were pens, so I kept my hand raised and raised and raised- and finally, instead of answering my question, she assigned me 200 sentences to write as a discipline “I will not raise my hand and be disruptive during test time” (I wasn’t being disruptive, except to try to get attention that I was being denied, so I could begin this very important test).

And the answer was No. I had to use a pencil.
Fuck you too.

In 11th grade this exchange would play out again almost verbatim. Again, I wasn’t sure if I could use pen or pencil. Again I raised my hand to inquire. Again I was deliberately ignored for upwards of 5 minutes. Finally I lowered it and rolled the dice, and just started writing in pen. Immediately the same prick that had ignored me for five minutes calls me out into the hall. He told us we couldn’t write in pen on the “new desks” because he didn’t want to get them… penned up? Or something. The more I think about it, the less it makes sense in hindsight.

He hauled me down to the principal’s office, and do you know what he wanted to do to me for this “disobedience?” Hit me. Literally hit me, with a paddle, on the ass. Several times. I declined his sadism, and scraped gum for several hours instead.

My ego may have died in the paper angel costume, but I didn’t need to see its corpse flogged by that piece of shit.

The following year another teacher, massive nurse ratchet clone control freak with a huge chip on her shoulder for anyone that dared be different, lied to the school board about me, accusing me of being lazy and doing nothing on this “missions trip” we were forced to go on in order to graduate (long story), even though I have an entire catalog of photographs of me mowing the desert, roofing, and painting the inside of this dirt shitbox.

Didn’t matter. The fact that I’d even contradict an “authority figure,” even if they were blatantly and demonstrably lying, just couldn’t be abided. They mandated that I apologize both to them, and to her.

I mandated they go fuck themselves, and found myself swiftly expelled.

In college a Professor ripped apart a creative short story I had worked on to an unnecessary degree, and I found out later that it was largely because he was going through a bad divorce- after fucking one of his students, and one of my good friends. I had such a positive first impression of this guy, but left the class filled with disgust by the end of the year.

And then there’s the Priests.

I was forced to attend church every Sunday and every Holy Day, and as soon as I was old enough to carry a giant brass cross I was drafted into the alter boy brigade, which consisted mostly of just me and occasionally a few other boys. But because my mom was such a fanatic and involved with stuff, I was always the first one drafted for special events.

Once again, thrown up on stage against my will in a ridiculous costume for an hour (eternity) out of every single precious weekend. The priest during that time, Frank, was alright. I’ll give him props, in general, for not being a creepy weirdo. However, my siblings that have kids still go to Church, and somehow they are constantly getting these moocher priests showing up for dinner on holidays and other events.

The last time it was just my brother and his wife, their two kids, and me, hanging out at a cabin on the beach we all share. They brought home this priest after a weekend mass, and he started pinging red flags immediately. Was very interested in my 5 year old niece and even younger nephew. Until then I had kind of been ignoring the guy, as I don’t really care for strange priests in my private spaces, but after the red flags hit I watched him like a hawk until he left, and asked my brother and his wife to not have him back as a favor for me.