Derek J. Barbee
5/19/99

The Sub From Hell


(Or Somewhere Nearby)

Now, I'm not a person who is normally mean to subsitutes: they'll probably get enough grief from the other kids who sense an easy kill like sharks. But have you ever gotten a sub that is just so infuriating you have to say just something that crosses the line into evil territory? I had one today. And I am going to have her for two more days until I am free for the weekend.

Introduction:

Our teacher for Spanish Class, Mr. Albavera, had taken off for the Senior Trip, leaving us with a sub. Usually I don't mind this, because sometimes it's a break from normal class routine. Sometimes the sub is even cool. Not today. I have no idea where the Cold Storage For Subs Company had been keeping this one, but I think the freezer cracked just a bit.

Now, a couple of weeks before, I had had this same subsitute for my Computer Applications Class. She was SO sexist, and not willing to listen to anybody who wasn't a girl. So when she had a problem that only the guys cared to fix (the girls were off not paying attention, and she wouldn't listen to us), we were seriously up Sh*t Creek.

She had gotten the instructions for the wrong class, and was attempting to teach us how to use a program that none of us could probably pronounce the name of. It was some fancy art program that had always been on the computers, and was used only by one class. Problem: that class wasn't us.

Jason mostly tried to talk to her, not once raising his voice. I was fairly impressed with him. But of, course, the sub wasn't. She thought he was just some punk kid trying to get out of doing his assigned work. We were all punks. And we would DO the work, dammit, even if she had to shove the computers down our throats and force us to.

Finally, she acknowledged that this MIGHT NOT be what we were supposed to be doing, but, oh heck, let's do it anyway just for fun. So we did it. We didn't understand one freaking thing, but we did it. THEN, since our normal teacher was gone, we weren't supposed to be doing our normal class stuff without him, because he's the only one who knows how to operate some necessary equipment. So we were all going on the Internet and working on HyperStudio Stacks and on MUCKs and such. She came up and gave Jason a disgusted look.

"What a senseless waste of technology. Do you know how many other useful things you could be doing on there aside from looking at trash?" she said, looking like she felt truly sorry for Jason because he did not know this.

Jason looked at her incredulously. "Excuse me if I offend, but I like my trash."

She just tsked and walked off, not even acknowledging that he said anything. Everybody just looked around at each other with the "Whoooooo..." look and went back to what they were doing.

Now apparently, this sub liked girls. She liked them a lot. Through the class period, girls were just walking in and out, going to other classes and chatting and laughing and going wherever they damn well felt like going. The sub didn't even give them a second glance, and would wave sometimes. 45 minutes into the period, there were 3, count 3, girls left in the class. 3 out of 10. Jason walked up to the sub and asked politely: "Can I go to the gym for a moment?"

The sub looked up at him criticizingly and asked: "Why?"

He stared at her for a moment. "Because I'd like to go ask someone there a question about homework in another class."

"No."

Just like that.

"Why not? They're all going," he said, pointing to the girls.

I didn't catch the subs response to that, but the girls laughed. It was an evil laugh.

"Maybe if you had longer hair," said the sub, looking him over. This caused another fit of laughing from the girls and Jason gaped at her. "What? You don't like boys so much?"

"Boys aren't evil!" called Darren from across the class. I looked innocent and tried not to be noticed.

"Well, no you can't go to the gym," concluded the sub, and then went to chatting with the girls.

Jason stopped, looked at himself, them pulled his shirt out so he had a larger chest. "Now can I go?" he asked.

"Nice try. No."

"Why are you so sexist?"

"I'm not sexist."

"Then why can't I go?"

He never got a straight answer for that. I watched him go at it for 25 minutes before he finally gave up. This sub, that so innocently chatted with the female population of our class, was evil.

Two weeks later, I had her again.

.

Day 1:

I came into class and set down my bag just about as Jason and Josh came in. Jason looked over and got this look of horror. Sitting in Mr. Albavera's chair like she owned the place, was the same sub. "Uh oh."

It didn't start out so bad at first. There was a large project Mr. Albavera told us we could work on, and we all knew what we had to do. The sub apparently didn't believe we could absorb information so quickly, so she told us three times, full through. She was looking at a piece of paper (which I noticed was for Spanish II) and telling us totally wrong, what we had to do.

"You will need to make a cover page with art and maybe photographs, including a title. You will need to make 10 pages, for ten pictures."

Josh raised his hand. "That's 11 pages."

She just ran right over him. "On each page you need a picture with four sentences in Spanish telling about the picture of yourself. Your first needs specifically to start of with Hola. Me llamo . . ."

I raised my hand. She kept going, telling us more of what we didn't really have to do. Finally, after about 2 minutes of non-stop talking, I finally interrupted. "Not to be rude or anything, but I don't think you have the right instructions. We know what we have to do, and that's not it. He specifically told us what we had to do, and it doesn't have to be in booklet format, it can be a poster board and doesn't need a title page and doesn't have to start with . . ."

About then she started talking again, not even looking at me. I was amazed at how rude this lady was. Did we have to be rude as well just to talk to her?

"You will all need some paper. Get paper out and get working."

Half of us already did and had been working on it until she had begun giving us bogus instructions. We all sat in silence for a while, trying not to interfere with her preaching and just worked on what we knew had to be done.

3 or 4 minutes later, she found an excuse to yell at Michelle. "Why don't you have any work out on your desk! Get your pictures out and get working!"

She responded, not rude at all. "I don't have any pictures with me today. I am currently deciding which ones to use, because I have them all at home. I'm writing out what I am going to do."

"Get out your Spanish Book."

"Why?"

"You're going to read Chapter 2."

"But we read that five months ago."

"You obviously have nothing to do, I'm going to give you something to do."

That was when Michelle started getting annoyed, not responding well and attempting to ignore the sub. The sub went up the board and started drawing boxes.

"What you also need to do (which we didn't) is make a storyboard. People do this professionally for presentations and other things," she said, drawing another sloppy box.

I raised my hand. "They also do that for Web Pages and Design."

She turned and gave me a withering look. "I don't care about web pages."

I was frankly almost shocked. What right did this sub have to come in here and treat us like this? And then started to insult us.

She got a glazed look in her eyes and stared right past us. "I can't believe how rude kids are these days. When I was in school, no one ever talked back to the teacher. All they did was follow orders, and if they got out of line, they were spanked.

In the back of the class, Angel said: "If you touch me, I will sue you for sexual assault."

Jason tried not to laugh and the sub looked sharply at Angel. "What's your name?"

"Angel Pas."

"I don't want to hear you talk like that to me, do you understand?"

Angel was an attitude person. "No, I don't. You stated what you could do to me, I stated what I could do to you. The point is, we aren't living like that any more, schools are different. I was just saying what I thought," she said, looking at her.

"Go to the office."

"What?!?!"

"I don't want to hear you talk to me like that. Get your stuff and go," she glared, pointing to the door.

Angel stood up. "You know what? Fine. I'm leaving." She picked up her back and walked to the door, looking mad.

"What's your last name?" asked the sub AGAIN.

"I already told you my last name!" Angel called back, leaving out the door.

The sub marched over to the phone and dialed the office, starting off immediately by asking: "Yes, who is this?" This is a freaking school, lady. You're talking to the office. You don't need to freaking know who they are.

"Yes, well, I just sent a student down there," said the sub, staring at the wall. "Named Angel . . . she didn't tell me her last name. And the rest of the kids in here are doing nothing, and telling me that Mr. Albavera normally lets them do that!"

That was when Jason started laughing. He just began cracking up, laughing that that wasn't what anybody had said at all. The sub gave him a glare which did nothing, and briefly thanked whoever was on the other end of the line, hanging up.

The rest of the period, everyone worked in silence, not wishing to bring wrath down on their heads. Emily rubbed her ankle and muttered that she hoped she didn't sprain her ankle in these high-heels. I asked her why she wore them, because I was curious. She just replied that they looked good with certain dresses. Right then the sub interrupted, saying we were off task and needed to get back to work.

Later, Suzanne was looking at some of Emily's pictures and helping her decide which ones to use and the sub dubbed them as "not working." She grabbed the picture from Suzanne and threw it back on Emily's desk. "No one else can look at your pictures! Just do your work! You do play at break!"

"We get a break?" asked Josh hopefully.

"No," came the inevitable denial.

It went on like that for 80 minutes until the bell finally rang and we were free. We practically stampeded out the door, the sub yelling for us to walk. Everyone else left, I stood outside the door with Josh and Nate, telling all the next Spanish Class Members to be careful and they might live.

Then our next period teacher was gone and we were supposed to work on a poster for the parade. Lucky us, we had to do it in the Open Area . . . right outside Mr. Albavera's door. We could hear the sub yelling at the kids.

A few minutes later, Will came out of the class, shaking his head with an odd look on his face. We all clustered around him, asking about the teacher. He shrugged. "Well, right off the bat, she was pissy. I was talking to Adrian and she asked my name. I'm all: "I'm Will." She asked me what my last name was and I told her I didn't have one."

All of us laughed and set about thinking of names we could use. Josh and I started acting out skits of name usage for the class.

"What's your name?" I asked in the teacher's voice.

"Jack," said Josh.

"What's your last name?"

"Meoff." He stopped and looked hopeful. "It's Russian!"

Jason started doing the incredibly annoying thing from WWF: the "Suck It" routine. He said he wanted to go back into the class and yell out the "I have two words for you" bit in Spanish, then do the move. "Yo tengo dos palabras para tu!"

Suddenly, another person came out of the class. Monica, looking extremely angry. We all grinned and asked at the same time: "Did you get kicked out?"

She wiped the angry looked off her face and give us a calming smile. "Of course not. I'm going to the bathroom!" With that, she stormed off towards the bathrooms, still steaming.

Next it was Josselyn coming out of class, with that feigned hurt-angry look on her face she always has when she gets kicked out of class. We asked if she did, and she answered with an affirmative, ugly look back at the classroom. "Yeah. There is something wrong with her! She is yelling at everybody!"

Now we all started making bets on who would come out next. We were wrong when Melissa came out, also kicked out. She went to the office, too, carrying her stuff. When Gabby came out, she was hidding a barely concealed grin. "I'm going to a dentist appointment!" she stated happily before we could even ask.

Monica showed up again, with Jason calling out suspiciously. "Gee, uh, Monica . . . you're sure going to the bathroom a lot, huh?"

She called back over her shoulder, "It's a urinary disorder."

"She bought that?!?!?"

"Sure did!"

We peeked into the classroom, seeing the rows of kids in their desks, looking incredibly glum while the teacher strutted across the front of the classroom, probably preaching to them how naughty they were. Our view was suddenly cut off as she intentionally shoved something in front of the door, blocking our view. Two seconds later, the principal came from the hallway, telling us to get away from the door. Behind her was Jocelyn and Melissa. Jocelyn gave us a thumbs-up sign and grinned. Things were looking better.

The principal went into the classroom and didn't come out for a while. When she finally did, she still hadn't dropped her cool look, and told us to go back to what we had been doing and not to pester that classroom anymore. After she had left, Josh noted that the class would probably be bothered without our help, so that did make sense.

For a while, we actually resumed working on the posters we had been doing before the people had started streaming out. Conversation moved off of evil subs to normal stuff, like TV and music and other schoolwork stuff. Then . . . the students people began the exodus again.

Out came Antanacio, out came Adrian. Then, finally the bell rang. We waited by the door for them to come out running, where we could pat them on the back and keep 'em moving until everyone was safe. But they didn't come.

We risked a look into the classroom and saw the students were still plastered to their desks, watching the talking sub still pace in front of them. "Isn't the bell working in there?" asked Josh.

"She's holding them in there," I said, disbelieving. "I don't think she's allowed to do that. I mean, these kids have rides, buses to catch, homework to do, jobs to go to. Just to torture them longer . . . wow . . ."

The principal showed up again while we had our backs turned, telling us politely to get the hell away from the door again. We quickly obeyed, scuttling out of the way. She strode into the classroom and said a few words that were lost through the walls. She came back out, giving us stern looks. Around 10 seconds later, the anticipated rush of students emerged, like a cattle stampede. We helped them along, hands on their shoulders, keeping them moving.

"Good job . . . it's all right . . . keep going . . . you're free . . . that's it . . ."

We all whewed as the last of the kids went and stopped, looking around at the normal after school activities (Only they were slightly LATE after school activities). Out of curiousity, I peeked back into the classroom for a quick look before my friends could pull me back, thinking I was attempting to committ suicide. But I did get a look, and was only half surprised at what I saw.

The sub was gone. Dissipated, probably teleported out in a flash of dazzling flames, back to hell. Until tomorrow, of course.

.

Day 2:

When we got to school, we started asking around about the sub, asking if anybody knew anything. She was a very talked-about subject, but no one knew very much. Plenty of rumors, no facts.

When it came to sixth period, Josh, Jason and I stood outside the door glumly, with Josh and I humming the Star Wars "Death Parade" music that they always play when they're showing something about the Empire or Darth Vader is arriving. We take a breath and step into the classroom, to see . . . a different sub. We all cheered, Josh and I throwing ourselves in front of the sub's desk and doing small Indian Tribe bows, heads on the floor. He blinked and gave us a curious look sitting up. "Uh . . . hi. Are you really my students?"

We sat up quickly, chorusing. "We hope so."

"What happened to the sub yesterday?" asked Angel as she entered the classroom and saw what was happening.

The new sub shrugged. "All I heard was she went home. I was called on pretty short notice, because someone said she just left; she didn't even contact the school to let them know she wasn't coming back.

We all wowed and sat there for a moment. So we had been spared. Until next time . . . that is.

But we shall wait for the day . . . and then we shall bring Whoopee Cushions.

[Navigator]