The Clinger Jr.

I thought that one of the big advantages of my new job would be the consistency. I would know which students I was going to be dealing with at any given time on any given day. Better yet, there would be no clingers. Even the most obnoxious of adolescents would only be in my room for fifty-five minutes a day.

Theoretically.

You should really never make sweeping generalizations about teenagers.

I had a problem child in my sixth hour. To sum up, he watched too much South Park and thought that it was so funny, he should model his own behavior after it. This essentially meant that he spouted obnoxious, and generally racist, remarks almost constantly. Throw in a dash of potty humor and a "your mom" quip here and there, and you'll have a pretty complete picture of him.

Just as Japanese Mr. T's rambling tales of erectile dysfunction made his classmates squirm and look at him sideways, this student's crass remarks made his classmates squirm. The building tension finally came to a head one day when he turned to a girl in the back row and, for all the class to hear, referred to her Pakistani boyfriend as a (and remember, these are his words, not mine) "sand n*gger." I was completely dumb-founded. She was in the social worker's office in tears. Parents were on the phone in a rage. All signs pointed to Little Mr. T on the fast-track toward expulsion.

What happened next is a bit hard to explain. After a few days of exchanging emails with the social worker and speaking to both sets of moms and dads (which, in Little T's case is actually dad and truly Disney-style evil stepmom), I pulled him out of class. I asked him if he wanted to be expelled. He insisted fervently that he did not. Then, I explained, the only person who could save him was that little girl in the back row, so he had better fall down at her feet and beg for mercy.

This he did, though I don't know exactly how he managed it. What I do know is that it involved apologizing to both her and her boyfriend and that when he was done, she dropped all the charges against him and after that they got on like a house on fire. What's more, all my problems with his outrageously inappropriate sense of humor vanished into oblivion like a politically incorrect ninja.

Truly miraculous.

So all was well, you assume? O no. Never make assumptions about teenagers.

Very shortly after the dust settled on this one, Little T started developing another peculiar quirk. He started coming to my room on his lunch hour when I was teaching another class. He insisted that this would keep him out of trouble, as lunch hour is normally fraught with mischief-making and shenanigans of all shapes and sizes. We struck a deal -- as long as he behaved in sixth hour, he could stow away in my room during lunch hour.

The arrangement worked well for a while... 'til he came in my room one day during fourth hour. When I inquired as to where he was supposed to be, he explained that his math teacher told him to get out and never come back. Ever. She didn't account for the fact that there are no refugee camps for geometry exiles, so the child had nowhere to go. "You can send me to the principal's office," he suggested, "but I won't go -- I'll just go out to the parking lot and smoke pot with *insert names of two other miscreants here* 'cuz she threw them out too and I know that's where they are."

*sigh* So I told him to sit down and be quieter than a deaf, blind, and mute mouse. In fact, quieter than a mouse that was actually dead.

By the end of the year, Little T was attending my class for three and a half hours a day. Three and a half hours! He was a Miss G junkie! He truly must have been Mr. T's much younger and much whiter twin. The other option is that some time before Mr. T's current erectile problems, he fathered a son...

Ew.