Day 22

They got some lazy ass teacher observing me today--Mr. McGillicutty, whose management skills are so poor they took his class away and gave it to me. He floats around subbing when other teachers call out. The kids know he's afraid of them and they abuse him mercilessly. He decides to observe my 7th grade class last period and I'm thinking "oh, well. He won't learn much today. They don't scare me but it's not like I manage them!" But via a combo of my usual tricks (names on the board, banging on things with sticks, kicking the drum-like side of my desk, scratching my nails down the board, engaging LCD projector slide show shit) I got them seated and working. McGillicutty was suitably impressed and took notes and asked me questions. I was starting to feel cocky, like "yeah, I'm showing this guy who's been a teacher ten years longer than me how it's done!" when La Manche and Sashay both jumped up, simultaneously throwing text books at each other and yelling "I'ma fuck you up bitch" in chorus.

I thought this would be ugly. Sashay is about 80 pounds, an adorable little Bernadette Peters look-alike with pouty lips and twinkly dimples. La Manche is about 160 pounds of packed muscle with a layer of chub on top. She's a bruiser. I worried that Sashay was about to get wrecked, but before I got over there Sashay had squared her shoulders and set her pelvis like an old-timey photo of a gentleman boxer (minus the handlebar moustache). She socked La Manche 8 or 9 solid blows to the face before La Manche even got her feet set. Each blow thunked home, La Manche's glasses went flying, there was blood from her eye, her forehead, her mouth and her nose when I got there. I stepped in just as La Manche's George Foreman scud missile punch came crashing down on my skull. I wrenched them apart with my shoulders and Sashay neatly bopped La Manche over my shoulder with three more exquisitely precise blows to the face.

I thought La Manche would tear her apart! Dag. Of course, to be fair, I prevented La Manche from connecting her blow (which hurt like fuck). I grabbed her around the waste as McGillicutty pulled Sashay out the room. La Manche was heaving me around the room like a bull, picking up chairs, thrashing around like a mastadon in a tar pit. I'm not huge, but I'm a pretty solid 195 pounds. She was hauling me around the room huffing and puffing and bleeding. I couldn't talk her down so I allowed her to pull me over to the speaker so I could call for assistance. Hall monitors came and hauled her off.

I hope Sashay don't hang around after school. If La Manche gets her down things will be ugly.

Half day with the students tomorrow for parent-teacher conferences. No parents will show, so I will have many unimpeded hours in the afternoon for grading and planning and room decorating. Woo-hoo. I am such a loser--I really enjoy decorating my bulletin boards.