when you were a boy you used to wish for this, but like a cat who turns his nose up at the dish, now that you have it, you want to give it away...

i kidded myself that i had encountered true bureaucracy--the kind that turns a meek kitten into a raging, betty friedan android. to be honest, i'm not even sure that something this personal can even qualify as bureaucracy. in short, my boss has decided that i am a half-wit. he hired me over the phone when i still lived in cleveland...apparently my stats and credentials spoke for me. i made a misguided attempt to validate his mealy-mouthed ego for it is obvious that principals have outlived their usefulness. there is a reason that principle means an upstanding philosophy and principal means useless paper-pushers who usually sport a mustache (regardless of gender...heh). i sought advice that i didn't really need on an issue that he knew nothing about--classroom management. seriously, the guy couldn't manage a room full of mannequins...i mean, assistant principals. from that day forward, he simply decided that i cannot do my job (check my students' test scores, bub), that i have no control over my students (when they, in actuality, live in a mixed state of terror, awe, and adoration, no doubt!), and that i know nothing of the curriculum (excuse me, didn't i score in the top 15% of test takers of ALL TIME in the praxis? cough).

our department chair, god bless 'im, thought i would be good to head the freshmen honor's class. mumblemumblemumble...something about high expectations, holding the line, standards, achievement gap, etc. i thought it might be fun to teach students the garnishes and desserts of literary analysis alongwith the meat and potatoes of reading and grammar fundamentals. it sounded like we had found each other at last! ah, l'amour! my principal (for i can no longer choke out the word "boss" with regards to him) even approached me as i crossed campus one day. "you got time (sic) for a five-minute chat?" he told me he appreciated my flexibility in the past years when it came to scheduling (insert eye roll). he said he liked my "witty rapport with my students" (pfft! i knew that!). he claimed he respected my, "rigor and high expectations of the students" (okay, this time i KNOW he was lying! on more than one occasion, he has asked me to "be more understanding" about students' struggles...translation? change the grade so our starting quarterback could be eligible). i began to develop my lesson plans for the honor's classes. dreams of complex sentence structure and essays longer than 5 paragraphs and actual comprehension of "the odyssey" began to dance in my head nightly.

the upshot? he decided (unofficially...the coward is leaving before the announcement gets made) to give the freshmen honor's class to a guy who worked at the school three years ago, who fucked off at the end of the year, so miserable teaching there that other teachers noticed his markedly depressed moods, and who came crawling back to the school with a list of demands already laminated. must be nice.

so here's the deal: i shall take the freshmen who are at a 3rd grade reading level, tenderize their little brains with information until they are tasty and juicy (mmmm...brainssssssss), and then have them score even higher on the standardized tests than the honor's kids! the gauntlet has been thrown. the glove has slapped me in the face. that man just made my list of things to do today.

i'm comin', and i'm bringin' the big pain with me. he has been warned.