My palms were clammy.
I felt the eyes of everyone burning through my clothes, through my skin and deep into my soul.
What the hell is going on here? What am I missing?
My thoughts provided neither clue nor comfort. Locked in the gaze of my fourth grade teacher, I had no idea what she wanted. I was merely attempting to be accommodating to my teacher.
No matter how I tried, she became increasingly frustrated:
Me: Yup.
Teacher: Yes
Me: Yup
Teacher: Yes
Me. Yup
Teacher: YES.
Me: Yup
This was when she exploded. Her voice shrill, face red she screamed: GET OUT AND DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL YOU LEARN SOME MANNERS.
What did I miss?
Apparently the cunt was telling me to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘yup’.
Did I pick up on it?
No.
Was I being sarcastic?
No?
Did this turd have some sort of neurotic belief about respect that she was dumping down on me?
Yup.
Was I expected to read minds or at least pick up on her hint?
Yup.
And that’s it. Hints don’t work.
Despite this she was never direct when she ‘corrected’ our apparent ‘disrespect’.
The story in my teachers head and the story in my head were not the same.
She, the adult, seemed to think that I would somehow ‘find myself on the same page as her’.
Things that you believe to be simple, straight forward and obvious, others may be oblivious to.
When you expect others to think like you and believe the things you do about morality, justice, respect and ‘fairness’, you're likely pissing up a rope and expecting mind readers - or at least people taught the right and secret codes to fitting in and navigating a world filled with unspoken expectations.
This became a bit of a game for a couple of us. Once we knew that it was a game of hints, we started leaving hints of our own. The hints we left were done secretly, after school or early in the morning when no one was looking.
These ‘hints’ involved her prized Mercedes, a small twig, the removal of four valve caps and a small act to liberate the air from all four of her tires.
If they can’t read your mind correctly and you blow up at them, don’t be shocked like Mrs Lipton was when she left class one cold winter day to find that the air had been liberated from all four of her tires.
She’d blow up, we’d wait a week or so then let the air out of her tires again.
She had a tough year. We persisted through till June.
We had to. What else could we do?
She never did get the hint.