Dear Superintendent Nichols,
I am writing to you to ask you to reconsider your choice to fire me last Wednesday due to the events of May 6th. I don’t believe that I got the chance to share my side of the story. I know this may seem hard to understand, but the abuse case is not what it looks like. Instead, I believe that Tiffany Clarke, one of my kindergarteners, is responsible for the series of events that happened to me.
The shenanigans begin when Tiffany bites my arm during recess. She had got a splinter from the wooden playground and was crying on the curb near the jungle gym. I go over to help her. She shows me her palm, which is branded with the tiniest splinter I have ever seen. I start to pull it out and, suddenly, she bites me, right on my forearm. Turns out her parents had told her to bite, scream, and run if a stranger ever approached her. But I’m her teacher, for Pete’s sake. If you ask me, I think she just wanted to bite me. After all, she got pretty mad at me during finger-painting the other day.
So anyway, I scream and fall back onto the pavement, hitting my head off the curb between the grass and the sidewalk. Tiffany immediately runs away like her parents had taught her. I’m banged up pretty badly, so I take out my cell phone and call 911, just to be safe. The ambulance arrives a few minutes later and takes me to the hospital.
The results of the X-ray reveal that it’s nothing serious. I just got a minor concussion. I was to take it easy for a few days, then return to work.
So I go home and check my answering machine. Principal Lutz had called. She was angry at me for leaving the school during recess without notifying anyone that I would need a substitute. Apparently the kids spent the next hour making a mess of the classroom. They got into the finger-painting kit and spilled paint everywhere, and some of the kids wrote obscenities on the chalkboard. I don’t understand how nobody saw the ambulance out front. Nor do I understand where these kids learn obscenities.
So the next day I’m resting in bed (I had notified the school that I would need a substitute this time) when the doorbell rings. It’s Mrs. Russell, the mother of one of my students. She had come to my house to personally yell at me for her daughter getting paint in her eye the day before. I don’t understand where she got my address, but I guess in a small, suburban community everybody knows too much about each another anyway. I apologize for a while, but she just keeps yelling. Finally, in a desperate attempt to make her leave, I tell her that I would be happy to continue the conversation sometime in the future when I wasn’t suffering from temporary memory loss and agitation. She reluctantly agrees. I give her my phone number and send her on her way.
But things only get worse after that. My girlfriend’s friend, Cali, was driving by when I was handing my number to Mrs. Russell. I guess that a guy standing in an undershirt and pajama bottoms giving a young woman a piece of paper looks like the aftermath of an affair. So she calls my girlfriend, Rhonda. Rhonda immediately leaves work and barges into the house. She storms into my room with her fists clenched and her teeth chattering with uncontrollable rage. Then she leaps onto the bed and starts punching me. She apparently had had a tough couple of days, so she was really going at it. At that point, I think she is actually going to kill me.
So, seeing no other way out, I crawl out an open window and run down the street. She runs after me, shouting incoherently, and I pray that the neighbors have called the police. I slow down because the concussion is giving me a pounding headache. She tackles me to the ground, but I manage to push her off of me and get on her. I keep her pinned down by holding her wrists while she continues to scream and shout. And that is when the cops show up.
I go to the station, where Rhonda tells the police that I had made a habit out of chasing her around and fighting her. I tell them it was self-defense. They didn’t buy my story. Rhonda was more convincing, I’m sure. I never should have dated a drama major.
I get put on the stand two days later. I promptly lose the case, which upsets me but doesn’t surprise me. My lawyer didn't do a very good job. He didn't help me share my side of the story. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but he is the father of one of my kindergartners whom I left unsupervised.
I’m sure you know the rest of the story, Mr. Nichols. The news circulates through the neighborhood gossip circle and reaches you. And then you fire me. So now I spend my days sitting at home in my living room watching reruns of 90s sitcoms and waiting for Mrs. Russell to call. She still hasn’t called.
I hope that you will reconsider my unusual case. If anyone should have to leave the school, it's Tiffany Clarke. To be honest, she doesn’t even do a good job of sharing.
Thanks for your time.
- James Bleaker, Kindergarten Teacher