Mrs. Ravenbach's Way

by William M. Akers

  Sometimes in the fourth grade there are the tears. . . .

  It depends on the child. It depends on the teacher. It depends on the classroom. It depends on the flow of the studying through the semester and through the school year.

  It also depends on having no bad apples. I do not like the bad apples. Not one bit.

  Sadly, that semester we did have one bad apple. Just one. But still. One is one.

  As you no doubt have guessed, the bad apple’s name was Tobias. His classmates (I choose the term with care, because the child had no friends) called him Toby. He never stopped fidgeting, which is normal for fourth grade boys, of course. But this child never stopped fidgeting. Sometimes it was aggravating to me because it disturbed the other students in their work. It upset the order and the discipline.

  I called Tobias, “Tobias” because Toby was such a ridiculous name. I had grave reservations about his mother and father. What parent would ever name a child Tobias when they knew full well that his chums, if he ever had any, would be all of the time calling him Toby?

  In my entire life, I have never met a child named Toby who did not need to be smacked in the face.

  The most powerful being in the universe is the teacher. A teacher in a fourth grade classroom is more powerful than the President of the United States of America. Even more powerful, dare I say, than the Chancellor of Germany.

  I love the fourth grade. I have been teaching the fourth grade for twenty-six years. I love my classroom. I love my students; and my students, as I have told you, they are loving me also.

  I am particularly excited this particular spring semester because this is the most important year in my teaching life. It is the year I will possibly be receiving my fifth, my fifth, I am blushing, my fifth Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children.

  Everyone calls it the Teacher of the Year Award, but that is not its correct name. I have four on my mantel in my gracious home, smiling at me. Mr. Ravenbach polishes them for me. I adore them. In between the four of them, I have already a little pedestal waiting for my fifth Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children. And so, it is very important to me that all the children have a happy semester. And that none of the students is a bad apple.

  The McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children’s method of the lunchroom eating is truly ingenious. At each table there are seven children and one teacher. This allows the teacher to get to know the little children extremely well through the course of each week. After Friday, the students rotate to another table. Some weeks, I must confess, the next rotation is something I look forward to, right as I sit down to my table for lunch. On Monday.

  This particular Monday was not in that grim and awful category. This particular Monday, for my table were listed three little girls, including always-beautifully-behaved Drusilla Tanner. As we know, little girls always behave, especially if you give them a long, stern, strong stare which says that, if they misbehave, you will hunt them down in the girls’ bathroom and cut off all their hair.

  At my table, I was also to have four little boys. Arthur Hester, whose parents should divorce, and Larry Dooling, the baseball fanatic, who were quite malleable and pleasant. Richard Kaliski, the bald-headed brain. Also at my table would be the young Tobias Wilcox. Penitentiary-bound, no doubt.

  I sat down at the table with my wonderful Kartoffelsalat and Würstchen. I had carefully prepared my luncheon at home and carefully packed it in a cunning little handmade wicker picnic basket. I do not eat school food. There is nothing about American cuisine that is in any way attractive to a person of refined sensibility.

  I sat at the table with my back erect, waiting for the students to arrive so I could see what each one would bring from the cafeteria line to dine upon. The three little girls, of course, brought wonderful, wonderful foods—the vegetables mostly. I do so like children who enjoy their vegetables. It is a sign of excellent parenting.

  Larry and Arthur brought pizza. I gave them a look. Both threw their pizzas in the trash and came back each with a plate of healthy green beans. What well-disciplined, lovely children!

  Richard arrived with a bowl of soup and crackers and more crackers, and I noticed he had even more crackers in his pockets. Richard was a child who was deathly afraid of being caught out in the snow on the frozen tundra pursued by wolves, and it was important to him to always have food in his pockets. Richard could always be counted upon to have something in his pocket in case the teacher ever needed a snack.

  I patted my soft blond hair. I smoothed my Dirndl. I smoothed my napkin in my lap. My napkin was German linen from Hoffmann, the finest, finest cloth woven in the entire world. I saw young Tobias Wilcox approaching with his cafeteria tray, his fat little knees rubbing together making a slithering, squeaking, awful sound. His precarious swaying made me fear I’d soon be cleaning up a slimy mess with my neatly ironed Hoffmann napkin.

  Natürlich, young Tobias was bringing a most unhealthy meal. Actually, a pile of french fries with an enormous heap of ketchup spewed all over it higgledy-piggledy. Not a vegetable in sight.

  As he slumped his way toward the table, I gave him my best Teutonic glare. Much to my surprise, he ignored me.

  With an obnoxious scraping noise I am sure that he enjoyed, he slid his tray on the table and glared right back at me. I was taken by surprise.

  I do believe I heard Drusilla give a tiny snort of snickering.

  I had never had a child glare . . .

  Right.

  Back.

  At.

  Me.

  He sat his fat little bottom in his chair and continued to stare at me, and he picked up a french fry and mashed it in the ketchup until it was completely covered in the ketchup. In fact, the ketchup, it got all over his fingertips. Nasty little boy. He folded the french fry in half and stuffed it in his mouth, coating both cheeks with a massive smear of the ketchup. Into my linen napkin, I nearly vomited.

  “Tobias?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “No baseball hat at the table.” He removed his grimy hat and hung it on his knee. “Thank you. Now, please wipe your mouth.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And that little cretin of a boy looked me directly in the eye and wiped his stained mouth all over his sleeve, getting the ketchup on his shirt, which his mother had no doubt spent hours ironing. Well, his mother had more likely spent no time ironing it because I was beginning to think that this child was raised by wild dogs.

  Then, he smiled.

  I wanted to smack him.

  I wanted to smack him so hard that his eyeballs would fall out and roll across the floor and be stepped on by Carmella Peabody, the fattest child in the school. That would show the other children that they did not need to be sassy to Mrs. Ravenbach. But I refrained because that sort of behavior is not what a good teacher does. Especially when the principal might see.

  I glared at Tobias and said, “Where are your vegetables?”

  “I don’t like vegetables.”

  “Vegetables are God’s creation. Vegetables are why we live, why we eat, why we breathe. Every child loves the vegetables. Look at every child at this table. They are all eating their vegetables. Why are you not eating your vegetables?”

  His voice was quite quiet but still scratchy. “Vegetables are stupid.”

  “Vegetables are the most perfect food invented in the world by the gods.”

  “Am I allowed to disagree?”

  “Anyone may disagree if, in fact, they are correct in their disagreement.”

  “You think vegetables are the coolest thing. I think they’re not.”

  “Little boy . . .” I gave my voice a dark, ominous tone. Drusilla Tanner flinched. Tobias did not.

  “I’m in the fourth grade. I used to be in third grade and before that I was in second, and first grade, and before that, kindergarten. Maybe before that, I was little, but I’m not littl
e now.”

  “Tell me, young Tobias, in your life have you ever eaten a vegetable?”

  “Sure. Tomato sauce on pizza.” I sniffed. I have perfected a perfectly marvelous sniff. “And ketchup. And honey.”

  “Honey is made by the bees. Vegetables grow in the ground. Surely in your entire life you must have at least eaten one vegetable.”

  “Not knowing about it, I can tell you that.”

  “Young man. At once, take your plate of Fritten back to the cafeteria line and get yourself a reasonable luncheon, something that will nourish you for the rest of the long, long hours of education before your schooling ends for the day.” That little boy, he looked at me with his big, fat, wet eyes and shook his head. His filthy dirty face whipped back and forth so hard, it’s a wonder his eyes didn’t pop out and go flying across the room. I wondered where Carmella Peabody was. I said, “Excuse me?”

  He said, “Do you wanna be excused? Bathroom’s down the hall.” Bald-headed Richard laughed. Every other child at the table had the intelligence to keep very, very quiet.

  I gave young Tobias my most withering stare. To my displeasure, he did not melt like the Wicked Witch of the West at the sad, sad end of that movie.

  I said, “Replace your luncheon with something nourishing that will give you the strength to get you through the rest of the day. I have noticed that, on occasion, in the afternoon, the children have a tendency to droop.”

  “I wanna eat my french fries. That’s why I got ’em. I like french fries. My mother lets me eat french fries, and you’re not my mother.”

  “I am your teacher. In order of veneration, it should be: mother, father, teacher, God. No doubt your parents have taught you that. I have been assured by Mr. Hertenstein, the glorious headmaster of this glorious school, that you have wise and excellent parents.”

  “My parents don’t let me eat everything I want at home, but I’m at not at home and I wanna eat french fries for lunch and I’m gonna eat french fries and nobody’s gonna stop me from eating french fries because it’s a free country!”

  I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing. The skin around my body was getting tighter. A band of wide, white pressure was squeezing around my chest and there was a brilliant stabbing pain behind my eyes.

  In all my years of teaching, not since Fast Eddie LeJeune have I had a student look at me the way this young child was looking at me. A look so filled with bitter hatred toward his kind and caring teacher that I nearly fainted dead away there on the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children cafeteria floor. Only the thought of winning my fifth Golden Apple for Excellence in Teaching kept me upright, because as I knew full well, the fainting is a sign of the weakness, and teachers who show the weakness do not win their fifth Golden Apple for Excellence in Teaching at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children.

  I gripped the greasy cafeteria table with my strongest, strongest grip. I did not faint. I said, “You go to the serving line right this minute. Discard the french fries and bucket of ketchup you have put upon them and replace them with a suitable meal. Preferably of the vegetables.”

  I hesitate to call a child, especially a wonderful student in my own homeroom, a “snot-nosed little tub of sass,” but, sadly, in this case . . . That snot-nosed little tub of sass shook his head, and said in a most displeasing scratchy little voice, “I will not.”

  I heard Richard whisper, “Home run, Toby.” Tobias grinned at the childish encouragement and I gave Richard the look. Instantly, he wished he’d never spoken. Instantly, he wished he’d never even met young Tobias Wilcox. He bent down and began slurping up his soup, hoping I would not look at him again for the next four or five years. At least.

  Tobias had openly defied me. Me! His teacher, Mrs. Ravenbach. In all my twenty-three years of teaching, I’ve never seen a child respond in such a way. Not even Fast Eddie LeJeune.

  Because of Tobias’s ghastly manner, I naturally felt terrible for myself, but I felt much, much worse for him. Such a thing can only lead a child down the road to depredation, wrack and ruin, and a life of misery, suffering and, most probably, the penitentiary.

  Here was a child intent on going his own way. At that point, I must confess, I wiped a tear from my cheek.

  A tear, not only for him, the snot-nosed, dirty-hat-wearing, penitentiary-bound little miscreant, but a tear for myself because this child, in his moment of need, had reached out to me in suffering with an absurd diet of french fries and ketchup and I was unable to make him see the light. My tear was for my inability to reach a student, a student who so richly needed reaching.

  Or, who so richly needed a smack to the face.

  A good German education teaches one that every now and then, every student benefits from a good smack to the face. One must be careful not to wear rings with large jewels when one gives a student a good smack to the face, because it will tear the skin and leave a scar, and then the parents write unpleasant letters of complaint to the school board.

  Of course, in Germany, no one ever actually complains because they recognize the superiority of the teacher over the parent. “Mother, father, teacher, God” has a musical ring to it, does it not?

  I was forced to spend the rest of that lunch period and the rest of that entire endless, dreary week at the luncheon table with little Tobias Wilcox, watching him smile and eat every single day a disgusting, greasy, dripping pile of french fries encased completely with ketchup. Red, bright ketchup made with Red Dye Number 2, which, as you know, causes the cancer in laboratory rats.

  By Friday, at the end of a long, wretched, and difficult week, I dearly hoped young Tobias Wilcox would contract cancer, preferably of the galloping variety.

  Because young Tobias Wilcox’s unfortunate lunchroom outburst rang a rusty bell in my distant and, I had hoped, forgotten past, it is now, with a heavy heart, that to you I must explain about Fast Eddie LeJeune.

  My pupils, natürlich, they are all knowing all about Fast Eddie LeJeune. I commence every semester with a small inspirational speech about my long-ago experience with the young Edward T. LeJeune. Horror stories do get the children’s attention, don’t you think?

  LeJeune is not pronounced “Le June” like the Army base in North Carolina. It is pronounced more like “Le Ssshun.” From his last name, you can tell that Fast Eddie LeJeune was French. They were the enemy of my people during the Great War, and again, of course, in the Second World War. We lost both. At the World Cup time, I am not able to find myself cheering for France.

  Did you know that in France, they eat the snails? Disgusting little creatures that they boil and put back into the shell. Loathsome curled-up brown bits of warm slime. Who would eat such a thing? Unimaginable. Especially when you could gobble up a nice spicy Bratwurst!

  I was younger then and unprepared for the difficulty of instructing a child in my classroom like Fast Eddie LeJeune. It is very difficult to teach anything to anyone whose grandmother ate snails.

  He, being French, or more accurately, of French descent, did not believe in the order and the discipline. Success in future life is built on the order and the discipline, and as you will see, Fast Eddie had no success. Every day he was talking. Every day he was fidgeting. Fidget, fidget, fidget. I have never seen a child fidget more than Fast Eddie LeJeune.

  Every day of that entire unpleasant year, I faced off against Fast Eddie LeJeune. It was, I have to say to you, the most difficult year of Mrs. Ravenbach’s life. Well, until I met young Tobias Wilcox!

  Was I right in what I felt about Fast Eddie LeJeune and the importance in a classroom of the order and the discipline? Of course I was right. Look where Edward T. LeJeune is now. Where he richly deserves to be. Rotting forever. In the penitentiary.

  I have promised myself ever after, never to have a student in my classroom who does not believe in the order and the discipline. And progress. And good behavior. And eyes straight to the front, and hands flat on the desk, and feet flat on the floor. And absolutely no fidgeting, fidge
ting, fidgeting. For you see, the fidgeting leads to the disorder, and the disorder leads to the penitentiary.

  A penitentiary is a damp, dark place where they put bad children who grew into bad grown-ups. Penitentiaries are cold and grim and always made of stone. There is no television. There is no foosball. There are no video games or desserts or dolls or naps or candy bars or a mother and father to love you. There is nothing fun about a penitentiary. After one is put into a penitentiary, all one can do is to think about ways of getting out, which, of course, no one is ever able to do. The only other thing to do in the penitentiary is to wish you had been a better child and listened to your teacher so that you had not been placed in the penitentiary.

  Every person in a penitentiary is there because they were failed by a teacher.

  Can you imagine me, Mrs. Leni Ravenbach . . . having a second student who went to the penitentiary? Were that to happen, I would never win the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children for the much-deserved fifth time.

  Therefore, it will not happen. Tobias Wilcox will not be a second Fast Eddie LeJeune.

  I resolved to take steps.

  Fortunately, my glittery, rhinestone-encrusted cell phone was close at hand.

  CHAPTER 3

  The English, they are a civilized race, very good with the tea, not so wonderful when you discuss the building of the automobiles. But no matter. Tea, an English invention, or rather a Chinese invention much improved by the English; their tea is wonderful.

  Like Mrs. Ravenbach! Wonderful, wonderful.

  I always served tea from my beautiful Meissen teapot. My knitted-by-me tea cozy, my precious Meissen cups, earned from the first precious coins I saved from my first sunny and delightful days as a teacher. Can you imagine a fourth grade boy holding a fine porcelain teacup? Within seconds, it would be shattered on the floor! Oh, tragedy and woe!

  And, I am sure, woe to that fourth grade boy.