Teacher's Pest

Printer-friendly version

Tim King learns a lesson. Karen gets a lesson. A revised version of a previously submitted tale.

Teacher’s Pest
by Anne O’Nonymous

Teaching in any school is a difficult task, and being a substitute filling in near the end of a school year can be even more arduous.

Karen Martin knew this quite well, although she had been away from the classroom for quite a while pursuing a Master’s degree in Education. Among other things, there were students’ names to remember, their quirks, school rules, etc. All combined to make for difficulties, plus she was taking the place of another teacher in a subject she hadn’t taught for a long spell. And the biggest headache of all was Tim King! He had almost driven her out of teaching. He was a disrespectful, unmannerly, disruptive, spitball throwing, foul-mouthed juvenile delinquent in the making, and now he was in her homeroom. She had tried, tried, and could not get rid of him.

"Hey, Miss Martin. Gina Thomas, Social Studies. You’re History, aren’t you? I’ve got the classroom next to yours, mind if I walk down with you?"

"Yes, mostly Nineteenth Century. No, I don’t mind! So, what’s it like here?"

"Great! The Principal backs all the teachers 100%. The students are, for the most part, really great. Oh, you do have a few misfits, but they are the minority. Hey, I hear you got lucky!"

"How’s that?"

"You got Tim King in your homeroom."

"Lucky! You have got to be kiddin’, he was a menace some time ago! Nearly drove me out."

"Well, honey, he’s the nicest, kindest kid I’ve ever met. Helps tutor some of the less-gifted younger students. He’s stopped several schoolyard fights. Oh, here we are. Are you lunch monitor this week?"

"No, I’ve got that dubious duty the week after next!" The pair stopped in front of a classroom of boisterous children. "See you later, at lunch."

Karen watched Gina enter, before proceeding to her own room.

She entered the room, looked at the class, and wrote her name on the chalkboard. She quickly spotted her niece, Angela, talking to a boy who appeared to be explaining something in a book he had. "Tim King! With a book! And Angela was with him. What’s happening," Karen thought. The sight of Tim King with a book was unnerving; she just hoped it wasn’t a book on urban terrorism, although he probably could write one.

Tim looked up and saw the teacher at the front of the room. "Please excuse me, Angela, there’s something I’ve got to do!" He walked to the front of the room, coughed to get Karen’s attention, and said, "Miss Martin, I want to apologize to you for all those stupid things I’ve done in the past. I was a child and I acted like one. I just wanted to say, I’m sorry and if I do the slightest thing out-of-line, please send a note home to my mother. I will try to do everything in my power to make you proud you are my instructor!" With that said, Tim extended his hand.

Karen was in shock. She sat catching flies for a while, before taking his hand and shaking it. "I don’t know what to say . . . I accept your apology and I hope to be a teacher you’ll remember in your old age!"

With that pronouncement, the bell rang and the school day started. The class was the usual mix of nerds, Goths, jocks, suits, prom princesses and misfits. She introduced herself, heard the usual groans, questions about what happened to their regular teacher, and there was the taking of the roll, announcements of various kinds, and talk of athletic rallies filled in ’til the first bell rang.

Watching the class leave for their various destinations, Karen enjoyed a bit of pleasure that she was now back where she felt she belonged. Her first period class was starting to file in and Karen noticed Angela walking in with Tim. "I wonder if he knows she’s my niece and is trying to get on my good side," she mused. "Well," she said to herself, "better start earning my pay!"

The day went especially well, and time just seemed to fly by. Lunch period came, and Karen met Gina in the teacher’s lunchroom, just to the side of the student’s. There she got a surprise!

"Hey, Karen! Long time, no see." The voice was as familiar to her as her own. "Lena, Chuck. How are you?" It was back just after she started teaching that she met them: Lena and Charles Lohmann. Lena was a Phys-Ed instructor; Charles, Chuck to his closest friends, was mathematics -- Geometry, Trigonometry, beginning Calculus. They were both well aware of Tim King and the trouble he got into.

"Heard you got the mystery student," Lena said. Chuck followed with, "He’s as much a puzzle to me as income taxes!" All his friends kidded him about his inability to do simple taxes.

"Yep. I got him." The four sat and ate, talking about Tim King.

Gina asked, "Was he really a bad kid?"

"Bad wouldn’t cover half of it. He was rotten to the core, and then some!" The three then told of his exploits in graphic detail.

Gina shook her head. "I just can’t believe it. He’s so nice now. What made him change?"

Lena replied, "That, my dear girl, is the big mystery."

Soon it was time to return to classes, and the school day quickly came to a close. Karen drove home thinking about the changes in one Tim King (“He actually participated in class, asking very pointed questions”).

Meanwhile, Angela rode the school bus home holding hands with her best friend, Tim.

A routine developed, and time as it does passed quickly. Karen soon found that Tim King was not only true to his word; he was also an excellent student.

Ever since Angela started to spend more time with Tim, her grades shot up from just a C average to B+ to A+.

Over time, Karen observed Tim whenever she had a chance. Once, in a hallway, she saw him walking, not swaggering, toward her with two girls. Tim greeted her with, "Good afternoon, Ms. Martin." As he proceeded on, she noted how confident he looked. On another occasion, she saw Tim take on two bullies, who were annoying some younger girls, and soon had both running. "Well, one thing’s for sure," she mused, "Tim is no coward. What punishment could he fear so much that he would do anything to avoid it? What did he get that changed him so much!"

Still the mystery persisted. What changed a future gangster into a future Archaeologist-Historian-Senator? And how! She was starting to believe in alien abductions; she had to satisfy her curiosity -- what happened!!!!

It was several weeks later, on a Friday, after school, when Angela came in with a "Hi Aunt Karen! Tim’s mother would like to meet you."

"Well, this is a switch. Usually it’s the teacher who wants to meet the parent," Karen thought. "Well, I’m free tomorrow. Would that be okay with her?"

Angela thought for a moment prior to asking, "You’re curious about Tim’s change, aren’t you?"

"It has been on my mind, yeah."

"I’ll call Tim and his mom. Maybe they’ll explain or let you see for yourself."

Angela went to the phone, dialed Tim’s number from memory, and sat talking for a while. Apparently, they had come to some sort of a conclusion. Angela hung up the phone, turned to Karen and said, "Can you go over about eleven-thirty, and I’ll see you over there. I think you’ll learn a lot, maybe more than you should. Auntie, please don’t be judgmental."

"Whatever for? Whatever happened to Tim, it has made a better person of him, and I, for one, am glad it did. If I thought he wasn’t right for you, I would have done my best to keep you from him. Ever since your parents died, I’ve been looking out for you, I want the best for you, and since you’ve been seeing Tim, you seem to be happier, more carefree. He seems to bring out the best in you. Actually, come to think of it, he has done a lot for me too. I actually love going to school to teach, to watch them when they understand how history affected our country. It’s kids like Tim that make me want to teach them more, and, conversely, to learn more myself!" After the speech, Karen thought, "At last, I’ll know. This mystery will soon be history."

The next morning, Angela had a breakfast and before she left she said, "I’ll see you at Mrs. King’s house about eleven-thirty or so. You do know how to get there, don’t you?"

“Afraid not, sweetie.”

There was a quick exchange of directions, and Karen soon figured out her drive.

At about eleven-fifteen, Karen got into her car and drove the short distance to Mrs. King’s house. She parked in the driveway, walked to the door, and knocked.

The woman who answered the door appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with black hair, green eyes, well made-up, and a very distinguished appearance. Karen felt out of place, wearing a white blouse, jeans and running shoes.

"Come in. You must be Karen, Angela’s aunt. She’s told me all about you!"

"Mrs. King, I am so pleased to finally meet you."

"Connie, please! I don’t like formality among friends. Lunch will be ready in a few minutes. We can sit and talk about Timmy’s school work."

"Well, I don’t know where to . . . What’s that odor?"

"Tim is probably cutting some onions for the salad."

"Tim is making lunch?"

Connie laughed, "Yes, he has cooked dinner on many occasions. He also sews, embroiders, knits and does other housework."

"WHAT! A boy who does housework? You mean he can do that?"

"Let’s have a lunch, and I’ll show you all you want, or maybe don’t want, to know." Saying that, they adjourned to a cloth-covered kitchen table. There was a tuna salad, a shrimp salad, cold fried chicken, filled glasses of lemonade, and homemade chocolate-chip cookies.

Karen sat there and ate like there was no tomorrow. "Did Tim make all this? He should be giving lessons in Home-Ec. I am getting stuffed, but everything is just so delicious."

"He cooks like this all the time."

Karen glanced at Tim. He appeared to be taking no notice of the conversation, being more interested in taking care of Angela. He refilled her glass of lemonade several times, and her plate was restocked (without her needing to ask, Karen noted) as well.

"Karen, let’s go into the living room and talk. Angela, you and Tim go up and get ready!"

Karen followed Connie as she walked into a large sunny room. She sat, waited until Karen was comfortable, and began her story. "Tim was a rather good boy until his father decided to leave me for another, younger, woman. I’m afraid that he believed I chased his father away. He began to fall in with a bad crowd. To fit in, he had to show them he was as rough as they were. His grades started to fall and he was constantly in trouble. I didn’t know what to do. I was at my wits’ end. Finally, I called my sister; she said -- send him to me. I asked what she was going to do. She said, ‘Did you ever hear of Petticoat Punishment?’ and she explained it to me. Well, I sent him to her for a summer, and again the next summer.”

“Excuse me. Petticoat Punishment? I don’t understand, Connie.”

“Oh, sorry. Well, as my sister explained it it’s a form of behavior modification.”

Please explain — I hope it isn’t some kind of psyche torture.”

“Not at all. What she did was dress Tim in girl’s clothing. He had access only to his cousin’s hand-me-downs. Once he learned to walk and talk in a more feminine fashion, he was taken out shopping and given the opportunity to select his own attire. For a while, sis allowed him to meet only certain selected people. He was protected at all times, and was allowed to think he risked exposure as a pansy or sissy-boy in a dress.”

“I’m having a hard time understanding how a dress might help make such drastic changes.”

Connie smiled. She replied, “Think about it . . . here’s a boy in a dress out in public, people all around. He has to act the part of a well-mannered girl to avoid all those pointing fingers and laughing. Over a period of time, he learns new behaviors, sorta like learning to survive on an island somewhere.”

“I think I get it now. But why twice, Connie?”

“First time he didn’t want to go, second time he was anxious to go. He was even counting the days.

“Sis told me he was reluctant at first dressing in panties and training bra, then his cousins kinda helped him along. If he did well, he was rewarded; when he made a mistake, he was gently corrected.”

“And the uncle. Didn’t he object?”

“Who do you think suggested it in the first place? He’s just about the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. Oh, here they come.”

Karen turned to look, saw her niece, and a very pretty girl standing beside her. The girl was dressed in a light blue jumper, a ruffle-edged feminine apron, lime green blouse, pair of blue pumps with one-inch heels, and knee-hi stockings. A double strand of pearls circled her neck. She had very little makeup on, just enough to bring out her natural beauty, and her light auburn hair fell to her shoulders in soft waves. Startled she blurted out, "I didn’t know you had a daughter? She’s quite pretty."

Angela stifled a laugh. "Aunt Karen, I would like you to meet my very best boy- and girlfriend, Tammy!"

Now this was an unexpected development. Then, suddenly, the light went on for Karen. "This is Timmy? I don’t believe it. My God, you’re beautiful!"

Connie remarked, "Don’t they make a cute pair!"

”I see it now. Yes, I do agree. He . . . em, she is just, well 95% perfect.”

"I’ll work on that other 5%. Thank you very much," Timmy, now Tammy, replied, with a curtsey. "Mother always told me that having a pretty girlfriend is a privilege I must earn."

Karen sat there, watching as the two ‘girls’ cleared up the area. She now knew everything.

"Aunt Karen," Angela asked, "please, keep this a secret. If any of those bullies at school find out, Tim will be in trouble all the time. It’s not that he can’t take very good care of himself and me."

"Angela, darling, I will never do anything to hurt you or any of your friends! And I consider Tammy, or Timmy, your friend. He or she is welcome at our house anytime."

The rest of the afternoon was a delight. Angela showed Karen all the pictures of Tammy and his mother taken in various locations in the city. Tammy, for her part, brought in her sewing, knitting and the doll’s clothes she made, of which she was especially proud.

Connie explained, "Tammy makes these for the children’s ward at the hospital."

It was getting late, and Connie suggested dinner at a local restaurant. "Well, now you know. Too bad you have to keep this a secret."

"Yes," Karen said, waiting for the girls, who had gone upstairs to get ready for the restaurant. She had already forgotten that Tammy was a boy. "I just can’t believe the change it made in him."

She watched as two delightful visions, in pink dresses, petticoats and stockings, descended the stairs.

Karen smiled at Tammy, and remarked, "It’s amazing the change in you. Once I wouldn’t come within a mile of you, now I’m going out with you, your mother, and my niece."

Tammy remarked, smiling, "I’ve learned my lessons, the hard way."

Karen wanted to get in a little dig. "Now, I guess now when you’re a bad boy, your mother threatens to put you in panties, petticoats and dresses."

Tammy and Angela giggled. Connie explained, "No, Karen, when he’s bad, I take away his panties, petticoats and dresses!"

The End.

up
90 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

Dangerous File Name or Format

Puddintane's picture

RTF files are not particularly appropriate on a public server, as they have been known to carry malicious freight through the simple expedient of renaming a Microsoft Word file into an RTF file, which will be opened by MS Word without complaint, vulnerable to MS Word's many security lapses.

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

RTF - text

I changed it to a format that would allow it to be read without downloading, but if Annie wants, we will revert it to an RTF download.

Shades Of Aunt Jane

Almost expected to see her here or one of her students.
May Your Light Forever Shine

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

This story seems familiar!

This story seems familiar about an unruly bully, becoming the teachers pet. I don't remember the name of the story, but as I said this story seems familiar.

Great Story

RAMI

Anne, enjoyed your story very much. I agree with Stanman, I thought maybe this was going to be an Aunt Jane story or perhaps the Aunt who Tammy visited was a friend and admirer of Aunt Jane.

Thanks for a good read.

RAMI

RAMI

This is wonderful.

Not your usual style of petticoat discipline, but has a nice twist to it. I especially love the ending. Thank you for sharing.

Love & hugs,
Barbara

"With confidence and forebearance, we will have the strength to move forward."

"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."

Love & hugs,
Barbara

"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."

RTF Transmission

i was unsure of which way the story submission should be. As they were already in RTF extension, i sent it that way.

Is there another way that I can submit a story usuing MS Word that wouldn't be a cause for trouble?

Yes, this has appeared before; I am the author of one on StorySite, and I picked that up, revised it and sent it in, sorta getting my feet wet again -- and, I do like Aunt Jane. I just cannot do her justice enough to write an AJ story.

Oh, I think there's a story on Nifty, or Old Joe, on ASSTR that's named "Teacher's Pet."

Annie in PA

Annie in PA

RTF to HTML Conversion

Puddintane's picture

If you know anyone who owns a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio (I do, actually, but don't know exactly where it is these days) there's an add-in available through MS Developer Network that flows RTF to HTML.

One of the posters on the How do You Post thread mentioned NoteTab Pro, and there are several other products available.

Here's a list, not exhaustive but largish:

http://www.w3.org/Tools/Word_proc_filters.html

R2Net is Seventy bucks to buy, but you can get a fully-functional 30-day trial period. There are many such products as far as I can tell, although I haven't examined them in any detail.

http://www.logictran.com/products/r2net.html

How complex are the files to want to convert? Just off-hand, it would seem possible to create a perl script to do this for *simple* files, but complex formatting would be difficult. I'll investigate doing this and let you know what I run into.

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

Arachnophilia

Puddintane's picture

As it turns out, there is a "careware" Java product available which should work across multiple platforms, although you *will* have to seek out a Java download and install it in addition to the programme download.

http://vps.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/

Since someone else has already done the work, and it's "free," although I do encourage donations to hard-working software developers who are so generous and trusting, I'm not terribly motivated to duplicate their work.

On the Mac, TextEdit, the default RTF editor, does a moderately credible job of converting RTF files to HTML, although I was able to generate a bug when attempting to convert an ordered list. All the information was there, but the first entry in the list was separated from the rest. Curious.

I understand from discussion groups on the Web that Microsoft keeps changing the specs for their RTF "standard" (typical of Microsoft) and that same standard isn't quite as well-defined as it ought to be, so it's quite difficult to keep up sometimes, and there are hidden "gotchas" lurking around every corner, which only appear when certain "rare" sequences of instructions are encountered.

An RTF file is actually a set of instructions for a complex "finite state machine" that reads the file and executes it sequentially, capturing "states" on a push-down stack (like one of those plate dispensers in a cafeteria) as it encounters various keywords and then popping them up again when it finds a delimiter. At the end of its run, the stack is theoretically empty, but it's clear that some implementations drop a plate from time to time.

For simple files not using complex formatting, most converters are probably quite adequate, but I notice that a lot of them run from US$40 to US$300 or more, and then charge yearly "maintenance" fees to supply periodic updates (for which we can probably read "bug fixes") so I suspect that these programmes are difficult to create and maintain.

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

My Thanks

for the information. My biggest problem at the moment is just posting my emm "story" -- I get up to the teaser box, write in the info, then I guess I go to the "link" just below the box. Now, from there I pick up the MS Word version, in rtf format, in "My Reading", it appears in the window --- then?
Now in my way of thinking, I "preview," maybe change something, preview again then submit. BUT, as you can see in "Office Exchange," I'm really, really screwing up! And I can't figure out where.
An open question: Would "HTML for Dummies" help? Most of what I write is text, nothing fancy.
I get the Gotchas. Just hope nobody decides to make cars with a computer program -- imagine being asked "Do you really want to stop" at every red light! Then there would be a bug that would make your windshield washers run only in a month with a "Y."

A Grateful Annie O in PA.

Annie in PA

HTML for anyone

Puddintane's picture

Yes, almost any HTML book would help, and you don't need very much to make a great improvement in the look of stories.

HTML is the language of the Web, and what created it. It's moderately simple and consists for the most part of pairs of "tags," symbols that occur in pairs like "quotation marks" or (parentheses), an idea we all use instinctively enough that we make the "sign language" symbols for them with our hands when we want to distinguish or emphasise words or short phrases in spoken language.

In some human languages, even symbols we think of as solitary are turned into pairs, like the exclamation mark and the question mark in Spanish, a language in which the overall intonation pattern is so important that they feel the need to signal both the start and the end of sentences involving shouts and whinges. ¡HOLA! ¿Qué?

And of course our most important invention is the space, an almost invisible "tag" which always occurs in overlapping pairs and allows us to readily identify and distinguish one word from another. We didn't have the idea firmly in mind when writing was invented, and would run our words together in an unbroken string with no signals for either the beginning or the end of words, sentences, or paragraphs.

THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG

Some cultures were so wedded to the idea that text was folllowed with the finger rather than the eye that they wrote in a style called "Boustrophedron" where the lines alternated in direction as an ox pulling a plow might eventually traverse and entire field.

THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG
GODYZALEHTREVOSPMUJXOFNWORBKCIUQEHT
THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG
GODYZALEHTREVOSPMUJXOFNWORBKCIUQEHT
THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG
GODYZALEHTREVOSPMUJXOFNWORBKCIUQEHT

Confusing for us, but reasonable for someone who read by tracing out the letters and sounding them out as they went along.

There's a famous story about a monk in the European Middle Ages who complained that it was so noisy in the rectory, what with other monks saying prayers and all, that he couldn't read or write. The point, of course, was that he couldn't hear his own voice say the letters and sounds, and had no real idea what words *looked* like. Difficult for most of us to grasp these days, but you can get a hint of what it must have been like if you've ever taught a child to read.

These days, we use matched pairs of indicators, a special form of a letter to indicate the beginning of a sentence, the "CAPITAL," and a punctuation mark at the end. Full Stop.

Paragraphs use a similar special sort of indicator tag (at least on typewriters), a horizontally-extended space above and below a unified set of words that sets it off from the jumble of our thoughts.

The Big Closet editing facilities are themselves a sort of HTML for dummies tool, allowing you to generate tag equivalents through presenting a visual menu from which you can pick and choose examples, but it's an interface which makes no little or no effort effort to explain what's actually going on "beneath the surface."

A book would help.

Looking carefully at this tiny essay might help too.

"Tagging" our words isn't difficult. We do it every day and learned the habit quite early on at school, or even at our mother's knee as she read to us and showed us how the words worked. They're quite the thing, you know.

Cheers,

Puddin'
------------------
P.S. Most of the problem in your little note is that you're confusing the standard we see in newspapers, where we "abbreviate" the long horizontal space between paragraphs to an indentation, because newsprint costs money, with the one we learned at school, which requires TWO carriage returns between paragraphs.

Like this one.

Or this.

This is a bad habit encouraged by some word processing programmes, which will automatically expand a single carriage return into the visual equivalent of two carriage returns in one way or another.

People who learnt to type on manual typewriters with little bells when you came to the end of a line usually have better habits, as the difference between lines and paragraphs was very clear.

On Big Closet, we have the opposite bad habit, as the window editor pays too much attention to every carriage return, but doesn't echo what some of us think is going on until we preview or post our little screeds, so encourages those of us with the manual typewriter mindset to use too many of them.

--- P

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

This is a familiar theme,

This is a familiar theme, but it is well told. Thank you for an excellent story.