I was diagnosed with peanut allergies at the age of three. My earliest memories involve clutching my favorite stuffed cat while my mother gently drills me on food safety rules. To me it seems amazing that there could be people in the world who doesn't believe that food allergies can be deadly. But, apparently, there are. And one of them taught at my middle school.
Although the problem had been going on all year, it all came to a boil at the end of the school year. I refer to it as the Week from Hell, and it's probably one of the reasons my parents decided a service dog was in order.
I'd always admired the teacher a little. She wasn't afraid to get down on our level and partake in our immature (and sometimes dirty) jokes, and she usually had the last word. I liked her. We all liked her. And she kept a bowl of candy on her desk for us.
Unfortunately, about half the things in the candy bowl had "peanut" in the name. I asked her if she could give the class a candy that didn't have peanuts (I have an airborn-triggered allergy, so it was a problem when people ate these things in class) and when that didn't work I asked if she could set aside some peanut-free candy for me. Both times she answered with a lack of eye contact and a few murmured words about us all being equal. Since she was the teacher, and significantly taller than me, I backed off and let the matter drop.
In the last month of school I had a fight with a boy in the class, and in retaliation he would greet me every day with a wide grin and a statement about how he was going to make me eat a peanut-covered something-or-other. He thought it was funny, but I was afraid he might actually do it, or at least bring along a peanut-covered prop to drive the point home. I told the teacher, who laughed, placed her hand on my shoulder, and told me he probably liked me. Then pushed me firmly back towards my seat when I tried to explain that what he was saying was the same as a death threat. I told her twice more, which only made her direct me to my seat with more force while the boy watched and smiled wider. I was beginning to think she wasn't so cool after all.
Nothing academic really happens on the last few days of school, so they're basically just these times we have to show up and sit around watching whatever movie the teacher could manage to relate to the subject matter while staring at the clock and willing it to move faster. I hate last days even more than most kids because teachers feel the need to bring food, which usually means I end up watching the movie through the window out in the hallway. So I was really happy when the teacher approached me after class with six days of school remaining and asked me what sort of candy I could eat. I rattled off a few brand names, told her to check the back for the word "peanut" in bold letters, and dashed off to my next class thinking she wasn't so bad after all.
On Monday she handed me a box of Gobstoppers, one of the candies I had named, and told me to take my seat for the movie. And then she pulled from behind her chair a large bag of peanut butter cups and began to pass them out to the class.
I got up and asked her if I could leave. She told me absolutely not, go sit back down. I wasn't sure what to do. I hadn't been in a situation like this before; most teachers knew enough to let me leave, if not because they believed in my allergies because they didn't want to face my wrathful parents. It was possible I wouldn't react, but it was also possible I could go into shock, an experience I really didn't want. I decided I'd ask again if anything happened.
I didn't even have to wait two minutes for something to happen. My neck and wrists itched like crazy. I'd dragged my nails down my neck so hard they left scratches before I even realized something was wrong. I asked again if I could leave, sure she'd say yes, but she only told me off for pushing a closed issue. So I sat on my hands and hoped nothing else would happen.
Another two minutes and I was coughing uncontrollably and my throat felt tight. It reminded me of the time in fifth grade I'd gotten my necklace caught on my chair and snapped the string with my neck when I stood up. I got up and walked out, doing an embarassed walk of shame down the hallway as students in the classrooms I passed looked up at my loud coughing. The school nurse gave me Benadryl almost as soon as I walked in the door, and she let me stay in her office for the rest of the period. I told my parents what had happened and they called the school about the teacher. The next day I didn't really want to go back to her class, but I figured no matter how angry she was with me, at least she wouldn't make me sick again.
Then she made me sick again, opening a new bag of peanut butter cups and passing them out with a warning to me to stay put. I cried a little and decided that today I wasn't going to have a reaction, and if I did I wasn't going to let it show. But five minutes later I was doing the same walk of shame.
The next day, Wednesday, I stuck my head into her classroom, spotted a bag of peanut butter cups, and refused to go in, electing to spend the period sitting with my arms crossed in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the main office. By now I was starting to have smaller reactions, mostly minor skin rashes, from touching the doorknobs and railings all around the school. This teacher was giving peanut butter cups to every one of her classes, and they were going out and contaminating the school. I was miserable and I was on-edge. Enough so that on Thursday I refused to go to school. There were only two more days. What could be the harm in calling in sick?
Apparently there was a lot of harm in it, because everyone insisted I go. My parents made a compromise with the school and I spent the last two days in a storage room in the office, getting strange looks from the kids I passed in the halls on my way to the bathroom.
I had nightmares about that teacher for weeks during the summer, and at ninth grade registration I discovered she'd moved up to the high school and was teaching another one of my classes. She went on to make me sick six more times, passing out peanut butter cups at every opportunity and at one point scheduling a cooking activity. Fearing that she would take advantage of this new opportunity to poison me, I begged my parents to let me stay home that day. By this time they hated the teacher as much as I did, and they let me do it. I went on to fail her class, which she self-righteously told me was because I love to find excuses for my poor performance, although I think it was because I spent her classes fearing for my life.
I've wondered for years what she thought she was doing. My father says she thought I was trying to be more powerful than her by using my allergy as leverage and she was proving to me that I wasn't and couldn't. My mother just says she's not a nice person. From my point of view it felt like she was, at worst, trying to kill me, and at best trying to torture me a little.
I dunno. Has anyone else had a teacher like her?
No comments:
Post a Comment