Teach Your Children

I don’t know what happened that summer between fifth and sixth grade. I went from being a sweet little kid and teacher’s pet into the ringleader of a terrible band of rapscallions. Maybe it was MAD magazine. Maybe it was the games of kissing tag or the brutal rounds of tether ball at recess. I blame it on my wardrobe. I went from cute striped t-shirts to a turtleneck, cuffed baggies and a pair of three inch platform shoes that year taking me to a total height of about three foot five. Perfect gang attire for us hoodlums who had been assembled in Room 7.

Mrs. Virginia Bradford was one of our sixth grade teachers at Edison Elementary. She replaced Mrs. Horne, whom all of our big brothers and sisters had for decades before. Mrs. Horne was “no-nonsense” and we were thankful for our reprieve. Mrs. Bradford was a kind old soul with a frail little body and a warbly voice. She had the requisite cat eye glasses, brillo hair and wrinkled turkey neck. She was probably about sixty years old but to a sixth grader that’s like 100.

I don’t know whose idea it was, maybe it’s just that she was an easier target than Mrs. Horne was, but someone decided we were going to send Mrs. Bradford into retirement with a bang. 

It started out as small stuff. I would ask her if a few of us could measure the hallways for math extra credit. She’d smile in approval and hand us a yardstick which we cast aside as we sat under the coatrack. We’d come back to class after an hour or so and tell her the halls measured 25,000 feet. She said okay and marked it in her book.

As the weeks went on, we’d pass around notes instructing the class to all get up and sharpen our pencils at 2:15 or go into coughing fits at 10:25. One morning, after a round of synchronized sneezing, she screamed “You are so INSOLENT!” and stormed out of the room slamming the door behind her. Once she had gathered her wits, she came back to the room to find the door locked. We laughed at her through the window. Her knotty index finger shaking wildly at us. She had to get the principal, Mr. Gilbert, to let her in.

The next day, I was called to the principal’s office. Mr. Gilbert had been told that “Scott tipped Mrs. Bradford over.” I shook like a leaf and teared up. I had never done anything wrong before. I was student body secretary for hell’s sake! “It must have been Scott Defa or Scott Harshman.” I was a whiz at psychological Gaslight torment but could never cause physical harm. I was let off the hook.

One day, I came into the room to find the bulletin board decorated with a new spring motif. That bulletin board had always been my territory and I was shocked to see it put into the hands of someone else. “I thought it would be nice to let Brooks have a turn at it,” she said in her wobbly old lady voice, “maybe you can do a cloud and some wind.” “Why don’t you let Brooks do it?!,” I shouted and hucked a jumbo blue Crayola across the room.

Each morning, Mrs. Bradford would ask various students to come to the front of the class to discuss Current Events. The only thing we ever discussed was KCPX’s Battle of the Records. Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” was enjoying quite a string of victories. One day, Kip Taylor announced that it had beaten “Cherokee Nation” in a Battle Royale to become the new all-time champion. The class cheered wildly at this important victory. 

Mrs. Bradford took this as a way to get into our good graces. A week later, at the beginning of class there were pieces of sheet music on every desk. We were going to learn “Seasons in the Sun.” It was certainly more hip than “The Wells Fargo Wagon” or “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” —and it just so happened that it was also the week that we all became sick of Terry Jacks’ insipid dronefest. 

We booed and hissed as she led us in the opening strains. “Goodbye, Michelle, my trusted friend. We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten.” 

We were NOT going to sing that crap and proceeded to put powdered soap in the fish tank in an effort to kill her guppies.

Mrs. Bradford was never seen at Edison Elementary again.

We got a new teacher, Mr. Anderson who managed to eek it out for the rest of the year, shrugging off the spit balls and wads of gum on his chair.

***

Twenty years later, I was at KMart. I saw a shrunken old woman approaching me with one hand on a shopping cart and the other hanging onto what was probably her middle-aged daughter.

“Mrs. Bradford?” I asked. She looked at me with kind, yet nervous eyes and a bobbling head. “I’m Scott Perry. I was in your class at Edison in 1974.” 

“1974, 74, 74! ... Seventy Four!” The number sent her head spinning like Linda Blair’s. She clenched the arm of her companion and spun her cart in the other direction in a blaze of post-traumatic shock.

Gulp.

Now that I’m older and have friends of my own who are teachers, I feel like a pile of guppy dung and wish I could apologize to Mrs. Bradford. Seeing what today’s teachers have to put up with—testing, overcrowded classrooms and piss-poor funding (even spending their own money on countless copies of rejected sheet music)—a rogue bunch of pre-pubescent monsters can really drive even the strongest instructor over the edge.  

At Edison, I was the head chauffeur.