Since she often would just send me directly to the administration offices most days, I got to be very familiar with them. That school had three vice principals, and I got to know them all pretty well. They were having a hard time understanding why I was being excluded so regularly. As the school year concluded, they would come and “observe” me to see what about my situation was the issue. I wasn’t perfect; I was a ten year old boy with ADHD. But neither was I any more disruptive than the other children in the class.

My parents decided to have me repeat the 4th grade, and I had an entirely different teacher pair. They also put me in the school’s TAG program. This was definitely the right thing to do for me. The other teachers had none of the problems that that one teacher did. Meanwhile, that teacher had decided to to the same sort of thing with another child.

My fifth grade year was exciting, because that first teacher had apparently decided to start sending “problem” children out of her classes, and administration was not thrilled as they had things to do and couldn’t monitor kids all day. I ended up being a part of their process to force her to retire earlier than she intended.

Over three decades later I’m still angry about how she treated me, and I feel like her punishment wasn’t nearly as harsh as it ought to have been. She kept telling me I was a terrible child, and I internalized much of the abuse. I had a difficult time trusting teachers after my experiences with her.

I did run into her as an adult though. She recognized me and asked me if I had ever managed to “learn how to behave.” I told her that I had, and because of her I even read the newspaper daily. This seemed to excite her until I told her that I checked the obituaries daily for hers, and asked her to not keep me waiting much longer. She finally died about eight years after that.

Fuck you, Mrs. Gamble. The only thing keeping me from pissing on your grave is my fear of urinating in public.