Traditionally I use the first names of the students featured in my semi-regular "Student Profile" posts. Because we live in letigious times, however, I am a little concerned that, should the content of this post be discovered by its subject, it could be used as the basis for a defamation/libel lawsuit against the author. [Note: The content of this entry are entirely true, but, not being sufficiently familiar with legal affairs, I am not certain whether veracity is enough to dismiss a defamation/libel suit.] Accordingly, the student featured today will be referred to as simply as "P.E.," which could stand for "Pure Evil;" it could also be rendered as the more familiar "physical education," as in "what this student could use more of." After perusing this article, the reader is invited to suggest his own creative and clever version of the words for which the initials stand.
As per my custom, I have taken the effort to collect some photos to help the reader visualize the featured student. Fortunately, when P.E. isn't spewing obscenities at me or his classmates, he's generally sleeping, so I have some photographs that won't allow for personal identification. P.E. on left; Jennifer on right.
P.E. makes is virtually impossible to teach. In my mind, each day is a new day, and I tell myself “today will be different. I will find some way to grab his attention, and help him to learn.” However, each day he is only too glad to prove that I am wrong. Today was particularly bad, and after class, I wished that P.E. would just die.
“No, these are ungodly, wicked thoughts” I told myself. But it was too late: a detailed fantasy had already embedded itself in my mind.
P.E. is overweight (probably flirting with the medical definition of obesity.) In my mind’s eye, I watch him inflate to around 300 pounds, at which point he succumbs to type II diabetes. Both his feet are amputated; he goes blind. Bound to a wheel chair, his health deteriorates due to lack of physical exercise. Finally he has congestive heart failure, and suffers a massive cardiac arrest.
In slow motion, I watch him lean forward, clutching at his chest with his right arm, in the throngs of agony that shoot through his left. As he convulses forward from the pain, the momentum forward propels him out of his wheelchair, and he tumbles pathetically to the floor. A small crowd begins to congregate; they watch him writhe, but no one bothers to call 911.
“It’s better to let him die. His life wasn’t worth living, anyway,” they tell each other, as they shake their heads sadly. After a few moments he lies motionless, and, one by one, the crowd slowly disperses.
In my imagination, somehow this painful ordeal teaches P.E. a lesson: he should respect his teachers, and try harder in school. I’m not sure how adult-onset diabetes and a fatal heart attack imbue him with these important lessons, but it’s a fantasy.
This may seem cruel, but actually, it's a shorter, less tortuous ending than the alternate my mind had wrung out like creative water from a towel: P.E. is in a loveless marriage of convenience. Because of his poor relationship skills, his homelife has devolved into a travesty of marriage; basically, it’s two people under one roof; the only thing they share is a mutual repugnance. His laziness and bad attitude has also affected his relationship with his two (maybe three?) children who, like their mother, detest him. His general sloth and inability to communicate without vitriol have resulted in his being unable to hold any job for more than a couple weeks. The burgeoning list of “positions from which I have been fired” is making it increasingly difficult to find work other than that from a day laborer’s center.
What astounds me about these fantasies (besides the fact that they are, admittedly, cruel) is that they both have some basis in reality: P.E.'s weight problem adversely affects his health, and eventually causes his demise; or his indolence and general contempt for human society result in an unhappy family life and preclude him from retaining real employment.
While his complete disrespect for both me and his classmates, and his contempt for learning, are certainly my main grievances against him, they are, unfortunately, not the only ones. Although P.E. displays no aversion to being hated by his classmates, there is one student with whom he daily attempts to ingratiate himself: Benson. If Benson mentions Family Guy, the next day P.E. comes in and won't stop reenacting scenes from the most recent episode.
"Hey, Benson, didja see the part where Peter blah, blah, blah..." When asked to be quiet so that we can continue the lesson, P.E. just talks above me and continues with his personal burlesque. The quickest way to return to the lesson material is usually just to let P.E. complete his favorite 4-5 scenes, and resume once he can't remember any more. This Bensonphilia is a constant theme in class. Whatever Benson says or does, P.E. is compelled to mimick. Jennifer (pictured above), has noted that it's pathetic in every sense of the word, but she concedes that if she had a personality like P.E.'s, she would probably try to leech off someone else and steal that person's identity, too.
One day I watched P.E. correct Benson's vocabulary quiz. As I watched, I noticed that he wasn't marking the incorrect answers as incorrect; I added reminders like "Number sixteen is D. D! He put, A, so mark that one wrong." When Benson failed, he blamed P.E., who in turn blamed me.
"It's not my fault. It's his. He made me fail you. Don't blame me." Then he rose from his chair, sad against the wall, and put his hood over his face. Resisting my greatest protestations, he sad there and refused to move, demanding that I "make Benson say that it's not my fault. It's your fault. Make him say it."
[Above photo: P.E. with his hood over his face, refusing to sit in his seat.]
Sigh. There is little doubt in my mind that he will one day grow up to be a Public Enemy.
*This essay was emended April 4, 2007 (12:24 am). Special thanks to Andy, who found my errors.
1 comment:
this is probably the funniest entry for me ^^
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