Day -8

One full week remains in this wretched school year. The kids were off the chain weeks ago. They've now become something beyond that. We need a new idiom for their behavior, something to do with BP and oil spills--but I'll leave it up to someone who can think. All I can do anymore is react: "Put the desk down! Stop climbing up there! Why did you throw that? What are you thinking? Stop touching her!" I remind myself of the Bill Cosby Himself video from thirty years ago. "All children have brain damage!"

The mother of a troubled young girl spent the day in school today. I've spoken with her many times. "It's a damn shame they shipping y'all off," she told me. "This mess ain't you teachers' fault, it's the gottdamn parents who let they kids act like jackasses up in here every day. Look at some of these 11-year-old girls. They all hootchie. My daughter wore something like that I'd wear her ass out. Don't get me wrong, I don't like hitting chidren, but if my eleven year old had her titties out in school she'd pay the price."

There are condom wrappers in the stairwells. The police and administrators are hiding in their offices. There are huge chunks of dry-wall in the hallways on the floors. My class room door is down to its top hinge, just like last year. I have to lift it up and twist it to shut and latch the door, but the lock no longer functions. Any tiny tot with gumption can bust my door now, and they do so routinely, running in and swinging bicycle or dirt bike chains.

This is the kind of behavior Baltimore middle-schoolers get up to on the streets. Imagine them in your face all day. There's nothing like handling youngsters all day and then having them buzz through your 'hood in the evenings and on weekends, a couple dozen at a time, on a variety of gas-powered vehicles, popping wheelies, doing stunts, blowing traffic lights. It's like fucking Mad Max around here.