Your Tributes (part one)
By the way, I talked to my Mom today, and after exchanging pleasantries, the first thing she said was, "You said that I liked Marge Limon. Whatever gave you that idea?"That certainly made my day.
After a bit of back and forth, it turned out that she tolerated Ms. Limon in a professional sense, and never felt that she was disrespected by her (unlike 99% of the other people Limon dealt with), but never had any fondness for her, either. She also said that Limon was deeply bitter about something (maybe everything), but she never found out about what.
Okay, it's official, then: everyone but the brownnoser hated her.
As it turns out, lots and lots of people had versions of Marge Limon as a teacher, and you sent in some excellent stories, which I'll be sharing over the next few days. Some are funny, some are memorable, and some are a little sad, because there is a fine line between mean and cruel, and some of you had teachers that (like Marge Limon) went way, way over that line.
First off, though, a story from Derek Mirdala:
Tenth grade english.
I was an 'A' english student with a smartass sense of humor but never the cause of any real disruption or concern in class. I turned in one assignment the day before the Christmas break written in green pen with a casual "Merry Christmas!" written at the bottom of the page.
I went on my merry way, enjoying the holiday.
Break over, I had my 100% accurate paper returned to me, not a single red mark on any page except for the bottom of the last, where red pen complimented my green "Merry Christmas!":
Blue or black pen only
F
Happy New Year!
Well, at least she had a sense of humor. Marge Limon would have only laughed during certain moments in history--like The Inquisition, perhaps.
Next, a story from Andy Weaver:
We had this lady, too, and she was also the math teacher. Trigonometry, I think. She was absolutely brutal to everyone except for this one guy who was fantastic at math and also the quarterback for the high school football team(super double whammy guy that you respect but also dislike because 'No one is that good, right?'). Anyways, she would bite your head off and yell at you just to brighten up her day.
My most memorable memory of her was a day when the entire class was quietly working on some kind of assignment. She was sitting at her desk, which had two stacked metal pull out drawers on one side (standard type metal desk). She had opened both drawers at the time and was busy with something. Someone in the class, in a rare moment of active defiance, made a funny noise while trying to keep it disguised. She was so mad and reacted so quickly that she slammed her top desk drawer and jumped out of her chair. She started to quickly move around the side of her desk to throw down on the individual, but completely forgot that she had her second lower draw open. In her rush, she toppled head first over the lower drawer and head planted herself in a no hands cartwheel. She eventually ended up head down against a wall. To make matters worse for her, she always wore these massive, multilayer dresses that she must have picked up back in the 1800's. Her dress covered her like a parachute as she toppled and exposed these heinous undergarments. It took her a good minute to recover and get to her feet.
While all of this was going on, the entire class erupted into mass laughter, yelling, and general joyous ruckus, and not a single person got up to help. As she recovered, a deadly quiet came back over the class as people tried their best to hide their grins and squelch the silent laughter building inside.
Her little athletic attempt made headlines around the school and became legend passed down to every cowering freshman who got unlucky enough to see her name stamped on their class schedule. It was our secret battle cry. 'Remember the humiliation!'
Today, thirty cellphones would have snapped pictures and they would have collectively been on a thousand Facebook pages in fifteen minutes.
More tomorrow, and if you haven't sent in your story, there's still time.
<< Home