The Story of Josh Part Thirty Three … Oops, I ripped my pants!

We are on a bench in front of a Starbucks drinking hot chocolate again. My Bearded therapist says that most of these essays sound like I think that most people are idiots. I tell him that is how I feel 99% of the time. He laughs and asks me if I liked going to school when I was a kid. I have to think for a few moments and then tell him that most of the time I did before I moved to Ohio but that second grade kind of sucked. He looks intrigued and asks me to explain.

This is a therapy session and as always the therapist, or some facsimile thereof, is in.


I was never a person that ever wanted to draw attention to myself. I was much happier being in discomfort than asking people for help or from them to do something that would allow me to relieve the discomfort. I would much rather do something or go somewhere that I didn’t particularly care to rather than express my own desires and then have people criticize me or worse laugh at me. This was not isolated to any one person or group of people either. Family, friends, coworkers, authority figures, even people I didn’t like. I would like to rationalize this is some way but the reality was that I was just too fucking scared of what people would say or how they would react to my wishes and desires.

Even when saying something would have allowed me to avoid humiliation.

I second grade I was going to Lincoln Consolidate Elementary. We were not in a proper classroom. Due to overcrowding we were in a portable, a trailer that served as a classroom. There were about twenty or thirty on the schools grounds. I kind of liked Lincoln but in second grade I had Ms. Hawkins. This woman was the first teacher I ever met that I knew did not like kids. She was doing the job just for a check not because she had a passion for it.

Ms. Hawkins had no love for me and I had nine for her but we were polite to one another. I did my work on time and she didn’t hold me up for ridicule in front of the class like she did so many others. I don’t think she kept off the hellish stage because she cared one way or the other for my feelings. I think she did it because maybe she knew that something wasn’t quite right between us. I thought maybe she knew that I didn’t like her and didn’t respect her.

Mid way through the year this was confirmed.

At the parent teacher conferences following winter break, actually we still called it Christmas Break back then but we don’t want to piss off people with Santa Claus and a bunch of fucking elves, I went with my mom. These days that is normal, kids accompanying parent to conferences, but back then it was practically taboo. But for some reason, probably no sitter, I went with her. I waited outside the portable while mom talked to Ms. Hawkins. I played outside in the cold unaware of the weirdness going on behind the thin door.

When mom came out of the portable she seemed to be trying to decide f she should yell or laugh. As we walked toward the parking lot mom told me what had happened in the conference. She said that Ms. Hawkins had broken down in tears and asked my mom why I hated her (Ms. Hawkins not my mom, contrary to popular belief I don’t hate my mom). Mom told Ms. Hawkins that she had no idea what she was talking about and that she would talk to me about it. I told mom that I had no idea what she was talking about and that I didn’t hate Ms. Hawkins.

I left out the part about not liking or respecting her.

A couple of months later we were in the morning gym class. Ah gym the bastion of sanctioned sadism in public schools across the nation … CLIMB THAT FUCKING ROPE! Anyway we were doing sit ups and the seat of my pants ripped. I should have said something about it but that would mean drawing attention to myself and exposing myself to ridicule and humiliation. So for a couple of hours I thought I was so fucking clever in hiding my ripped pants from the staff and students.

I was in my reading class three portables down, I went to an advanced reading class in second grade fucking sue me, when the teacher told me to go back to my portable. When I got there Ms. Hawkins was waiting for me holding a pair of pants. She made a show in front of the other students of telling me that I should have told her my pants had ripped and that she had seen the rip as she had watched me walk to my reading class. The entire class snickered.

Yeah, “Why does Josh hate me?” … bitch.

So yeah, not only was my second grade year spent in a portable that froze in the winters and cooked in the summers but I also had to put up with shit like that. Is it any wonder that I escaped into TV and comic book when I was a kid? Although in retrospect I should have had more fun with her.

Some people may be questioning the veracity of my statements at the beginning of this piece. For many years I was that kid, afraid to make waves and always trying to just get along and stay in the shadows. But that person has been gone for awhile, these days even when it scares me I try to speak my mind regardless of the consequences.

Hence these essays.



We finish the hot chocolates and my therapist is looking at me kind of funny. “So basically you were a pussy.” He says and I throw my empty cup at him laughing.

I believe that is all of the time that we have today.