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In Loco Parentis

Drew Marshall

    Back in the so called progressive, nineteen sixties, “in loco parentis” still held sway. “In the place of a parent,” organizations, specifically schools, could take on the responsibilities and functions of parents.
    Teachers in the Public Schools, as well as my Hebrew school teachers, in the neighborhood synagogues, could discipline students as they saw fit.
    As I experienced it, this could and often did, include verbal and physical abuse.
    Miss Stengel was a psychopathic terrorist. She was also my third grade teacher.
    She was barely five feet tall, with a ruddy complexion; blood red. She wore a constant scowl and looked as though she would explode with rage at any second.
    She thought nothing at locking a kid in the clothes closet, if they weren’t paying attention or talked out of turn. She seemed oblivious to the sounds of their banging on the door or crying to be let out.
    If you didn’t know the answer to one of her questions, she would spew her venom all over you. In those days, and at that age, we never thought to question her methods.
    She pushed a student in front of her down the stairs, during a fire drill. This happened right in front of me, as I walked a safe distance behind her. I was big for my age and assume this was the only reason I had escaped her wrath.
    How this woman was free to walk the streets, let alone teach young children, was beyond me.
    Mr. Goldin was my Spanish language teacher throughout junior high school. He looked like your kindly old grandfather. The teacher wore the same suit every day. On occasion, the only change was the color of the bow tie. His “granny glasses,” would always slip down to the tip of his nose. He was forever pushing them back up again, towards the bridge of his nose.
    His quaint appearance masked a Jekyll – Hyde personality.
    Every Friday we were scheduled to have a test. This would cover the week’s lessons. I studied all week only to find, Goldin setting up a projector. The man would show slides from one of his European vacations.
    The first time this happened, I asked him about the test. He looked quite surprised.
    “Test? What test? There is not going to be any test today. Don’t worry my young friend. I will let you know ahead of time when we are going to have a test.”
    The class was then off to Portugal and Spain.
    This would happen once a month.
    If another student was foolish enough to ask about the test, when the projector was present and ready to roll, he would receive the same surprised look, along with a similar reply.
    Often he would stand in front of the class with a book in his hand, and review the day’s lesson. If we were stumped for an answer, he would explain the correct answer to us.
    If the teachers response differed from the one in the book, and any of my classmates would dare say so to him, it was taken as a personal affront.
    “THE BOOK IS WRONG! THE BOOK IS WRONG, GOD DAMN YOU! I’M RIGHT!
    LISTEN TO ME, NOT THE BOOK!
    Yelling at the top of his lungs, he would repeat this a few times before calming down. He would then proceed as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
    We were mystified by his behavior but had soon grown accustomed to his bizarre outbursts.
    When he walked up and down the aisles holding a book in his hand, we knew somebody was in for it. If you did not know the answer to one of his questions, he would unleash a verbal barrage on the unlucky kid.
    Teddy Kaplan was the fashion plate of the school. He had on his Beatles boots, skin tight, black checkered pants, and a dark red shirt. The shirt was accented with gold paisleys, flying around in different directions.
    Kaplan was one of the most popular kids in school and a very down to earth guy. Teddy never had a bad word to say about anyone. He sat in front of me during this class.
    Golden stood next to me and behind Teddy. The instructor asked Teddy a question. Kaplan was slow to answer. He became the target of torture.
    This demented senior, long past retirement age, grabbed Teddy by the back of the head. He barely missed hitting me on the left side of my face. Goldin liked to pull students hair while berating them. This guy had a beautiful head of thick, dirty blonde hair. Teddy was taken by surprise since he didn’t see it coming.
    He screamed in pain. Instinctively, Teddy swung his left hand out and hit Goldin’s arm. Golden released his hold from Teddy’s shiny locks. Kaplan stood up, and looked straight in to the trembling teacher’s eyes.
    “If you ever touch me again, I will have you arrested old man!
    He grabbed his books and calmly exited the classroom. Golden was taken aback. He returned to his desk, visibly shaken by what just happened, in front of some thirty five students.
    It was a turbulent decade of unrest, revolution and rebellion. This was the first time in my short life that I had ever seen a student defy a teacher, let alone make physical contact with one.

***

    My father died from a heart attack on my fifth birthday. He was a psychologist with his own practice. Dad was doing pioneering work with hypnosis, and was on the verge of publication, before his sudden death.
    My mother and I were not religious. We visited family member’s homes on Passover and Rosh Hashanah. That was it. When I was twelve and half, my father’s five brothers decided, out of the blue, I had to have a Bar Mitzvah. A ceremony that symbolized the boy is now a man, responsible for his actions.
    They dragged me all over the city, as they searched for a proper reception hall. The date was set. Now I had to attend classes. It would be a crash course. I knew nothing about the history, rituals or traditions. It would be a few more years until I heard the word, Holocaust, for the first time.
    I was sent to the small shul down the block. Rabbi Rabin was a short, stocky man, built like a linebacker. We knew his story. His wife had passed suddenly, several years earlier. His teenage daughter had committed suicide, the previous year. The late middle aged man had reasons to be somber. Rabin knew every kid in the neighborhood and their parents.
    So I sat in a class of several other disinterested kids, learning by rote, the selections I would read from the Torah. The rabbi had a nasty habit of smacking kids on the back of the neck, if they were not taking this as seriously as he did.
    He had the thickest hands I had ever seen. They came attached to wrists of steel. Sometimes he would miss the neck and hit your ear.
    I soon got fed up with this and reported the situation to my mother. She and my father were always against hitting children. I was sent to another Synagogue, about a half mile away.
    This place was huge. The building was half a block long and four stories high. I was a few minutes late for my first class.
    The instructor was a dour faced individual in his late forties. He asked me to identity myself and then I took a seat. There was only one chair vacant. It was up against the back wall, closest to the entrance.
    As I sat down, the teacher told me to read the lesson. I asked the kid next to me what page we were on. The educator told me to come up to the front of the class. I brought my prayer book with me, thinking he would show me the place to start reading from.
    He glared me for a moment.
    WHACK!
    He smacked me across my face, with the force of a tornado. I went flying across the room and crashed into the wall, before falling to the ground.
    I was stunned, and it took a moment or two for me to regain my composure. I stood up and then grabbed the prayer book from the floor. I threw it at this creep with all my strength.
    Unfortunately, I missed. The book went over his head, and hit the backboard behind him.
    I flew down the stairs and ran all the way home. My mother was quite upset about this. Nothing was done about it. I was back with Rabbi Rabin the next day. He cared about our souls, was what my mom told me. I paid attention and kept my mouth shut, to avoid any more blows to the head.
    I managed to get through the ceremony without a hitch. The highlight of the reception was when I managed to steal a cigar and a book of matches. I grabbed my two best friends Mike and Steve. We left the banquet hall and wound up in the backyard of a nearby apartment building.
    I lit the cigar and started inhaling. I didn’t know that was the procedure for cigarettes, not cigars. I started coughing my guts out as I passed the lit cigar over to Mike. He followed suite, as did Steve.
    We heard a female voice shouting from above.
    I looked up. An elderly woman was screaming at us, from her third floor window.
    “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE YOU DRUG ADDICTS, OR I’LL CALL THE POLICE!
    She then threw a bucket of water down at us. The downpour just missed her targets.
    The water sprinkled our shoes and the cuffs of our suit pants. I threw the cigar and matches to the ground and we took off like three bats out of hell.
    We snuck back into the Banquet Hall from the side entrance. Today I was a man. I could do things like that from now on.
    Even with everything that went on back then, they were much more innocent times, than what we have come to know since. The tide has turned.
    One of my closest friends since childhood went on to become a Special Education teacher. I would sit horrified, while listening to his war stories. Ely was assigned to some shithole in the South Bronx. It was not a school. It was a building which was annexed from a warehouse. My friend had lost a lot of weight. He rarely ate or drank anything during school hours. Ely feared having to use the bathroom, due to the less than savory activities that went on in there.
    I worked for the City Law Department, the Cooperation Counsel. I was assigned to the pre-trial torts division. We prepared case for trial. People who had sustained injuries on city property sued for damages. I learned from reviewing Board of Education cases that school administrators now had to fill out monthly checklists of various misdemeanors and felonies that take place in their school buildings.
    Near the close of the twentieth century, the nation was shocked by the student killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Two students went on a pre mediated, terrorist killing spree. The massacre had left twelve students and one teacher, dead. Over twenty others were wounded. The assassins then committed suicide.
    In the new millennium, students shoot to kill. Heaven help any teacher who gets in their way.

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