What Shall We Do With a Drunken Teacher?

Cheers to a new school year!

The title of today's post seems particularly appropriate, because today is the first day of school for many public and private schools around Atlanta. Also, teachers get so stressed out during the first week of school that I am sure drinking might not be far from their minds. Heck, I'm a teacher, and I don't even drink, but at the beginning of the school year I always ask one of the maintenance men at my school to install a margarita machine in the closet in my classroom. For some reason, the answer is always no, even when I inform said maintenance man that he will be entitled to free drinks for the rest of the year if he performs the task.

Now, I am sure most teachers, if they do decide to throw a few back, do so either in the comfort of their own homes, or at a bar or restaurant not in the vicinity of their schools. (Unfortunately, if you go to to any bar or restaurant near your school, you are destined to see students and their parents there, which is awkward, and which makes you feel like you are being watched the entire time.) And, before you ask, yes, I have actually seen a student in a bar. I have a story to tell you, however, about what happens when a teacher decides to do her drinking, well, a little closer to her students. Like in the classroom. When the kids are there. During the school day.

Now, before you call me out for making light of a situation as serious as a teacher drinking at school, let me just remind you that my writing is intended as satire, so please don't go around telling people, "That Audrey Broome thinks it's just great for teachers to drink at school!" Because, you know that game "Telephone" that kids play, where one kid whispers something in another kid's ear, and that kid whispers it in the next kid's ear, and whatever was said circulates through, like 25 kids so that what started as "My mom is a good cook," ends up as "I saw your dad doing Jazzercise with Richard Simmons”? Yeah, that game. Well please don't pass on the thought that I don't mind if teachers drink at school, because then I will get to work one day and be informed by my principal that rumor has it that, not only do I have a margarita machine in my classroom closet, but that I regularly share happy hours with my third grade reading group. So, anyway, on with the story.

When my brother, Devin, was in the fourth grade, he had this teacher who I will call Mrs. McKendrick. My brother thought she was okay, but he thought she acted strangely sometimes. Fourth graders are no dummies, and they are old enough to know a little about the ways of the world, so my little fourth grade brother reported to my mom that he thought his teacher might be drunk. I'm sure this statement was initially met with a little skepticism, because, you know, "out of the mouths of babes," and all. Over time, however, Mrs. McKendrick's erratic behavior increased in a way that suggested my brother’s observation might be true.

Swiss Cake Rolls are especially good with pepper and
Tabasco sauce!

When we were kids, my brothers and I loved Little Debbie snack cakes, and we would get to take one every day in our school lunches. Devin's favorites were the Swiss Cake Rolls, because he liked to eat the chocolate off the outside, unroll them, and then eat the cream first. Well, Swiss Cake Rolls came in a two pack, but in my house you only got to take one in your lunch each day, so my mom would separate them and put each in its own Ziploc bag. Well, Devin's Swiss Cake Rolls started disappearing from his lunches at school, and he suspected Mrs. McKendrick. Since the dessert was already opened and put into a Ziploc bag, he started doing things like putting pepper on the rolls and dousing the rolls with a little hot sauce to thwart the thief. Now, Devin points out that he cannot prove that it was his teacher stealing his desserts, but after a few days of peppering the Swiss Cake Rolls, the thefts stopped.

Another thing that Mrs. McKendrick did that pointed to something being off with her was that she called my Aunt Lynn one night  to tell her she was interested in my Uncle Scott. Lynn was pregnant with her fifth (and last) child at the time, and she didn't even have a child in Mrs. McKendrick's class that year, although Mrs. McKendrick had taught a couple of her older children when they had been in fourth grade. When the phone rang, Lynn answered, and Mrs. McKendrick said, "I just called to tell you I think your husband is very attractive." Now, who calls a woman to report that the the caller likes said woman’s husband, particularly when that woman is pregnant?

"Yes," said Lynn calmly, "My husband is very attractive, and hard working. But if he were to take up with another woman, I can tell you I'd make sure that he had no money left to use to show this woman any interest. Mrs. McKendrick, I can't believe you called to tell me my husband is attractive."

Well, Mrs. McKendrick hung up pretty quickly after that. The next day, Lynn went to the school principal, whom my mom and Lynn had both told several times that they thought Mrs. McKendrick was drinking, and told him the story of the phone call.

"Still think your teacher's not a drunk?" she asked him.

Around this time, in music class, the fourth graders were learning a song called What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? Since I'm sure you're curious, click here to read the lyrics. All I can say for this song being taught to elementary school students is that it was the eighties, and the station wagon was considered an awesome car. If people showed such poor decision making skills in deciding what cars were awesome, could we really expect them to exhibit better judgment in selecting songs to teach to children? Well, at this point, word had gotten around the whole fourth grade that Mrs. McKendrick was drunk at school and, instead of singing "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" The fourth graders would sing the entire song replacing the word sailor with the word teacher, which, if you read the lyrics, is actually pretty funny. They never sang these words during music class, of course, but would wait until PE or after school to sing them.

The final straw that resulted in Mrs. McKendrick being removed from the classroom occurred when one of Devin's friends, Arlander, went to ask Mrs. McKendrick a question about an assignment, and instead of answering him she hit him over the head with her fist. Not hard or anything, and she didn't cause any injury (she was probably too inebriated), but enough so that when Devin and Arlander went to the office to report the assault, Mrs. McKendrick and her hip flask were sent packing that day.

And that's the story, believe it or not. It always reminds me of why the maintenance man saying no to the margarita machine is a good idea.

Margarita photo courtesy of http://fdluxe.dallasnews.com/2013/05/this-weekend-dallas-bartenders-take-margarita-out-for-a-spin-you-and-a-good-cause-reap-the-benefits.html/

Swiss Cake Roll photo courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LD-Swiss-Cake-Rolls.jpg