It’s Vengeance She said, That’s the law
By fifth grade, we’ve had to deal with her ego-eccentric behavior for 5 years and 8+ programs for the adults. I remember one had us crooning about scientific things, like rocks, evaporation, and the colors of the rainbow; oh joy. Another was a sing along show with songs from 1900-1920.
Now she decides to do a ‘city mouse, country mouse’ show (that I found out later was written around 1909), except either she was concerned about copyright infringement or only had one lyric sheet–regardless she gave us lyrics on dittos and taught the melodies by repetition. That was problem 1: over and over past the point of nausea, since we had no point of reference.
Second, she was the world’s worst typist. Lyrics riddled with typos. Which we sang. Then time to stop and correct us. Each correction was harsher and harsher. And it didn’t help that some kids didn’t remember the corrections and sang the typos; alright, so sometimes it was deliberate. The best one I remember was ‘oof’ instead of ‘off’.
We were getting irked. Then she got on a jag about pronouncing words that ended in ‘t’ harder, so she told us to act like they were two syllables: ‘That-tuh’ ‘wan-tuh’ ‘nex-tuh’. She hammered away, day after day, making us hit that hard ‘t’.
And she did it: she pissed off the girls. This was the breaking point. Girls always did what she asked, but now they joined us boys on the passive/aggressive train. All of us sang the hard t’s loud and exaggerated. Eventually, she realized she’d birthed a monster. With only a days remaining, she tried to tell us to revert to normal t’s–as she got louder and harsher each class.
The stage was set. Pun intended.
On program night, we hit those T’s as loud and forcefully as we could. Parents snickered and guffawed. Her embarrassment was rage by Monday, as she struggled to sputter that our silly, infantile behavior actually embarrassed ourselves, not her. Then why we did feel so good the louder she ranted?
She finally spun out like a spent cold front and slammed the door. We giggled and exchanged smiles with the girls.
We hung out for a while, then someone ambled to the principal’s office, nonchalantly asking if Mrs. H if was ever returning. That could not have gone over well.
We later learned one mother was so concerned about her child failing because of the tongue lashing, she saw the principal to complain that we were not to be graded for an off hours/non-classroom program.
For the rest of the year and all of sixth grade, she went through the motions with us. Any plays did not involve the sixth grade (actually, our sixth grade teacher played the piano and we sang fun songs with him). Neither of us wanted to be there, but we gritted our collective teeth.
When we got to junior high, all kids had one thing in common: hate on the music teacher and her idiot programs.
It’s a wonder I even liked music after that….or should I say ‘Tha-TUH’.