Mrs Bagget

NOTE: In this true story about my life, I use a derogatory name, one that I'm ashamed that I used then and that I would never use now. I used it then mostly because it rhymed. I use it now to be honest about the story. 

"Mrs. Bagget is a faggot! Mrs. Bagget is a faggot! Mrs. Bagget is a faggot!"

That's the chant that I made up earlier this year about Mrs. Bagget, my so-called Gifted and Talented teacher. What do you think? I know. It's not the most sophisticated thing I've ever written. But hey, it was effective in its intended purpose, which was getting under Mrs. Bagget's skin. 

From the moment I met her, I pretty much hated her. I don't know what it was about her that bothered me. Maybe it was the way she dressed like a hippie. After all, it's 1980, not 1969. Get with the program. Or maybe it's the way she always talked to us. We’re in sixth grade, practically grown ups, but she still talks to us like we’re little kids. Or maybe it’s the way she talks about every activity we do as “just costing a couple of dollars each, and I’m sure your parents can afford that,” as if some of us maybe didn’t come from a big Catholic family and had parents who maybe couldn’t afford everything but who were too proud to sign up for free lunch, but who complained every time we brought home a form that needed money.

More than even that, though, it bugs me the way that she treats us like we’re a big deal or something. “You eleven kids are so lucky,” she told us in that stupid, slow, southern drawl. “Each of you has a special gift. You’re not like the other kids in your class. You, Trevor, you’re gifted in math and science,” she said as she pointed to the tall, awkward, scraggly boy beside me. “One day you might be an engineer. And you, Selena,” she said as she pointed to the only good-looking girl in this little pull out classroom, “you’re gifted in social studies and Language Arts. You might be a lawyer. And you, Bryan,” she said as she looked at me, smiled, and then glanced down at a sheet of paper, “you’re gifted in leadership and writing. You might be President someday.”

I don’t know if I’m gifted in leadership, but if I am, then I bet Mrs. Bagget rues the day we ever met. Because something about the way she tried to play up how great we were ticked me off, made me feel like she was putting down the other kids in our class, a bunch of whom I’m friends with. So I decided to use my so-called leadership skills to convince the other ten kids in my class to hate Mrs. Bagget. If I’m a leader, I thought, let me see if I can lead the others into making life a living hell for her.

“Mrs. Bagget is a faggot” was just the start of my plan. It worked out okay. I could pretty much only get the other boys in class to chant along with me, though, and there were only two of them. The first time she turned her back and the three of us did it, it sent Mrs. Bagget—holding back tears—out of the classroom for a few minutes. While she was gone, Laura, one of the other girls in the class, looked at me and said simply, “That was really, really mean.” I didn’t know how to reply, and after that, it was pretty clear that all of the girls were out.

But the day Mrs. Bagget left the classroom to go talk to another teacher, I was able to convince EVERYONE to leap up and turn all of the furniture in the classroom in the opposite direction. We even picked up her desk and moved it from one side of the room to the other. When she came back in the room, she was pretty angry. I think maybe we broke the strap on her purse or something when we dragged her chair across the room. I got detention for that.

I only have 1,000 words, so I can’t go into everything we did, but I can tell you that I spent as much time as I could making that boring Gifted and Talented class “fun” by making Mrs. Bagget angry, and I can also tell you that the straw that broke the camel’s back happened just a few days ago. Mrs. Bagget was telling the class how we were all going to Washington D.C. for a special Gifted and Talented trip. We were going to get to see the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial and a bunch of other things. At first I was excited about this. Then she handed us a form that we had to take home and get signed. It was a permission slip, and on the form, on the line where it said that the cost of the trip was $400, she had hand-drawn this little picture of the Jefferson Memorial.

Something about that picture of the Jefferson Memorial was so baby-fied to me. It made me so angry. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been that angry. She had her back turned to me, sorting out something on her desk, but I walked over to her, and I could feel my face was a bright red. “I’m not going,” I said to her under my breath.

She turned and looked at me. “What do you mean, Bryan?” she said enthusiastically. “Don’t you want to go to Washington D.C.?”

“I don’t want to go to Washington with you,” I said as low and menacingly as possible. “I hate you. I hate this class. I don’t want to go to Washington, and I don’t want to be in this class anymore.”

She looked uncomfortable but tried to laugh. “Well, of course you’re in this class. You’re gifted. You HAVE to be in this class. It’s for your enrichment.”

Telling me I HAD to be in the class made me angrier than before. Now I wasn’t speaking in low terms at all. I was shouting, shouting loudly enough for the whole class to hear. I was shouting loudly enough for the principal down the hall to hear. I knew I was shouting loudly enough that my parents were going to hear about it soon.

“Listen to me, Mrs. Faggot!” I shouted. “I am NOT going to Washington with this class. And I am NOT going to ever come into this classroom again! I hate you! You’re a terrible teacher!”

So that’s why I’m here tonight, sitting in this office. My mom and dad are meeting with Mrs. Bagget, Principal Johnson, and some lady from something called the “Central Office.” They’re all in the next room talking about me. And in just a few minutes I’m going to have to go in there and tell them why I acted the way I did, and why I don’t want to go to Washington, and why I don’t want to be in the class anymore. And I doubt they’ll understand.

But you understand, don’t you? It’s all because of that stupid Jefferson Memorial picture.
(1,171 words)