For getting away with being semi-senile while having responsibility (and the absolute power that goes with it) for thirty schoolchildren in the nine year old age range. For using her union membership to shield herself from any scrutiny from the school board and the PTA. For taking advantage of an elementary school principal too concerned with reaching retirement himself (and his pension) to make any waves (my K-6 school was built before WWII and virtually the entire workforce was looking at a mass retirement within 5-10 years of each other). For having a naturally vicious and sadistic mentality that could easily equal that of Nurse Ratched. For never smiling once in the whole of that school year. For engaging in taunts, deliberate humiliations, and outright beatings all zeroed in on me (remember, this was 1969, not 2011, but not 1869 either). For using a teaching style not in the sense of what was practiced in 1969, or even in the late 1920s when she received her teaching degree, but as SHE experienced as a child in or about the early 1900s. For failing me in all English and handwriting courses in all three grading periods because of my clumsy left-handed style of writing. For failing me in virtually every course more on the grounds of indulging her personal dislike for a nine year old than for actual failure. For the look of disgust on her face when she told me I was going on to the 5th Grade* (reflecting that the school was already aware of what this woman was, and was "passing" her entire class as their answer to the problem.

). For the fact that it was only the year AFTER I left her personal corner of Hell that she found herself being escorted out of the school building by the police and told not to return.**
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*-To find myself with my 5th Grade teacher, Mr. Ray Lutz. The absolutely best instructor I ever had in my life. I have no doubt at all that if it wasn't for him, my guidance counselor Mr. McKnight, and of course my mother, I would have killed myself by age 14. It was only many years later that I discovered Mr. Lutz was Jewish. Which is why I hate Anti-Semites with such a passion.
**-According to a next-door friend of mine who had that class, having a supremely non-confrontational heavily bullied personality like mine in her class, combined with her being one year older, and one year deeper into her senility, caused her to go hog wild on her whole class that year. Some of the kids went to their parents, who went to the PTA, who went to the school board, who went to the Superintendent of Schools, who made an investigation of his own, and arranged for her to be forced out (with pension, she'd been retirement eligible for many years) on the last day before Christmas Vacation. Her replacement? Miss Bobiwick. I first knew something was up when everyone in my class could hear the screaming cheers in the schoolroom next door (Sunden's/Bobiwick's). I wanted to throw up. I DID cry. When I first saw Miss Bobiwick, well... A face that could launch a thousand ships, an ass like a pair of pears, legs up to her neck, and a pair of torpedoes that I KNOW would have been fake if I'd seen them today.

There ain't no justice. Why did all my teachers have to have one foot in the nursing home and the other in the cemetery? How about you?
End (very long) rant.