Post-It Notes and Pumpkin Mush:

My Journey From Student to Teacher and Back Again

He should never have worn that leather jacket - the one with all those zippers and chains. It didn’t help that he also had on tight black pants and a long silver chain around his neck with a giant key dangling from it. He said it was “the key to his fiancé’s heart.” His fiancée’s name was Dawn. After he explained this to us, Marcy Faircloth immediately raised her hand. “So Mr. Skinner, did you wake up at the crack of Dawn this morning?” His pale, round face burned with embarrassment as we all struggled to muffle intense laughter. “Don’t wooorrreeeeee about it,” was his reply.

The minute he walked through the door of my seventh grade math class I knew his days as a teacher were numbered. We would make sure of it. We were not an intimidating group. There was Marcy, the wiry redhead with the green vinyl backpack and scattered freckles. There was Bubba, with his plaid flannel shirt always tucked neatly into his faded jeans with the hole in the knee. Heather, with her fashionably crimped hair and perfectly round glasses, hardly breathed a word for as long as I knew her. And Kristen, dear Kristen. She did science experiments in her spare time and hardly ever looked anyone in the eye.

Despite the utterly harmless nature of the students that made up this class, we would become the mighty terrors that drove all five feet of Mike Skinner from the field of education. Who knew we harbored such power? I don’t think it was any one event that drove him away, but rather a succession of moments scattered throughout the year like thunderstorms in the summertime – only a few of which I remember with delightful clarity.

“Ahem….ahem….AHEM.” A hushed giggle started in the back corner of the room and spread to the front, evolving into shameless laughter. Mr. Skinner finished writing his equation on the chalkboard before turning around and giving us a look that was intended to quiet us with its intensity. Instead, we thought he had something in his eye, and the laughter grew louder.

“WHAT are you laughing at?” he barked.

“Skin-Daddy, your pants are ripped,” answered Charlie from the front row. “Don’t wooorrreeeeee about it. No one should be examining my pants,” was his response as he turned back to his equations. The two-inch split that ran vertically right down between his back pockets remained the focus of the rest of the period. The next day, he came to school wearing those pants – the split sewn up in the back with white thread.

In a heroic attempt to quiet us, he climbed onto his desk and began shouting at us from his newfound height. He talked about respect, about maturity, and about how we’d never pass math if he was all we were interested in studying. I could only stare at that big silver key swinging back and forth. Occasionally, it would catch on his shirt buttons, which were undone just far enough to confirm that yes, indeed he has chest hair, albeit sparse, and no, he was not afraid to show it off.

He finished his lecture, and the room was finally quiet. He hopped gingerly off his desk, only for one leg to land in the little round garbage can to send him tumbling to the floor in slow motion. There was no redeeming any instructional time at that point. Loud cheers and howling laughter rang out, and he stood up with his face so reddened that the flaky white dandruff in his eyebrows glowed. We were so loud that no one heard him as he squealed his already signature response, “Don’t worrreeeeee about it!”

There is nothing worse, nothing and no one more void of remorse than a mean seventh grader. Had I but known that one day I would be teaching them, I might have handled that year a little differently. But I didn’t. Instead, I signed up for the Halloween lip sync contest, rented fishnet stockings and go-go boots, and started practicing “Stop! In the Name of Love” with the passion and energy of Richard Simmons on speed.

Katie, Foley and I had waited for this night for months. It was our time to shine. It came and went, and our moments in the spotlight of that old, tin band hall were not enough. We needed something else to give us more of that delicious adrenaline. We camped out at Katie’s house that night, and this could only mean one thing: pranks. And when the conversation turned to choosing a victim, only one name crossed our lips: Mike Skinner.

Since we had to work with what was readily accessible, we chose the three pumpkins sitting next to Katie’s front door. We certainly weren’t bold enough to actually do anything destructive with them, so we smashed them up and put the goo into a large brown grocery sack. I know - devilish, just devilish. With a bright red marker, we scrawled “DON’T WOOOORRREEEEE ABOUT IT!” across the front of the bag. Armed with our bag of soggy ammunition, we set off on the one mile trek to the home of one Mike Skinner.

We arrived at his house to find the lights were out. Perfect. Two cars sat in the driveway – Dawn must be visiting, we mused. Being the fearless pranksters that we were, we quickly and carefully placed the bag on the top front porch step. Hearts racing, we darted out of the yard and down the street until the house disappeared from view. Back in Katie’s yard, we sat down in the damp grass and breathed sighs of satisfaction at having trespassed on our teacher’s property and left a token to let him know we’d been there. We exchanged victory high-fives and made a toast with candy bars, clicking them together in the moonlight. “To Skin-Daddy,” we giggled.

We promised each other we’d tell no one of our prank, but by Monday morning at ten o’clock, half the seventh grade knew about it. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets. As rumors of pumpkin mush swirled throughout the halls, another slightly more disturbing rumor made its way to us, the victorious Supremes: Mr. Skinner’s fiancée, Dawn, had spent the night in the emergency room.

Turns out bees really like pumpkin mush. It also turns out that Dawn’s allergic to bee stings. Deathly allergic, as a matter of fact. Who knew?

Eventually, tales of our weekend adventure made their way to Mr. Skinner. Our hearts were pounding like jackhammers as we made our way to his desk after class. He’d asked to see us, and my palms were cold with sweat. I’m quite sure we had beads of perspiration on our foreheads and were visibly trembling with fear. I had visions of handcuffs dancing through my head; I could see it all clearly: “You ladies come with me. You’re under arrest for the murder of the fiancée of Mike Skinner. You have the right to remain silent.”

I didn’t want to imagine the looks on my parents’ faces when they’d find out they would be visiting me in prison for the next thirty years of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing my cat, Tigger, anymore. And my dream of moving to Hollywood at age nineteen for my big break? Dashed.

Mr. Skinner looked at us, not saying anything, for about fifteen seconds. The zippers on his motorcycle jacket gleamed in the sunlight. All three of us stared at the floor.

“The beds they give visitors at the hospital are very uncomfortable. Did you girls know that? My back is sore today, and Dawn won’t be released for another two days. They think she’s going to make it, though.”

Every muscle in my body tensed at that moment, and my visions of prison life started to seem like reality. My eyes brimmed with tears as I looked up at Mr. Skinner.

“So she’s probably not going to die?” I croaked.

“No, I think she’s going to be alright. But she’s in a whole lot of pain right now. What you girls did was not funny. I don’t appreciate the gesture one bit.”

I couldn’t hold the tears in any longer. Out they flowed, down my cheeks and onto the floor.
“We are so, so very sorry, Mr. Skinner,” Katie said softly. “We didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Mr. Skinner looked at us silently for another fifteen seconds, studying us like the Pythagorean Theorem. I held my breath and looked at the door, bracing myself for my impending arrest.

“I hope you understand that your actions have had serious consequences. Because this happened outside of school, you won’t have any kind of punishment from me or the administration. However, I am going to have to call your parents.”

“Not the police?!” I asked apprehensively.

“No one is calling the police,” he answered.

Though the reactions we got from our parents weren’t pretty, a relief that we weren’t going to prison settled deep into our bones. Our time was up; we wouldn’t be pulling any more pranks on Mr. Skinner, save the occasional use of school intercoms to serenade him with our rendition of “Bad to the Bone” when our teacher left the room. For the most part, the rest of the year was void of any major drama.

Fast-forward eleven years: I am standing in front of a class of middle school students for the first time, sweating bullets and praying not to become like my former victim. I’d carefully checked my sweater for zippers and my pants for rips. There was nothing I would tell my students “not to worry about,” and I wouldn’t dare stand on any elevated surface to get their attention. I made every attempt to prevent any “Skinner moment” from becoming my reality as a teacher. I knew that Karma was not on my side.

Despite my best efforts to avoid any kind of breakdown, on day five, it happened. I was relegated to the teachers’ lounge for a forty-five minute cry-fest after my third period class proved wholly and altogether uncontrollable. I questioned everything I was certain of in those moments as I made my way to the teachers’ lounge, tears rolling down my face. I sat in the swivel chair, turning back and forth and wondering if this was my “Skinner moment.”

It had all the signs: ardent frustration, relentless thirteen year olds, mayhem, turmoil, and tears. And although I had sense enough not to come to school dressed as a leather-clad biker, I did show up armed with the faulty ammunition that is an unrealistic vision of one first year teacher magically creating an academic utopia despite “the odds.” I’m convinced that I might as well have gone the biker route that first week.

Unlike myself and my former classmates eleven years ago, these students had a rare mercy about them: I returned to my classroom after they’d left to find my door covered with heartfelt apology notes scrawled on yellow Post-Its.

It was a picture of grace: they’d forgiven me my first naïve mistake, and though I was certain more would come, I knew at that moment that it was worth it. The tears, the struggles, the hits and misses and the trials by fire – it was all worth it. I had been given another chance by my students, and I’m still grateful for that.

I should probably go look up Mike Skinner and give him a call.