Hell is for Children.

Yes, I am aware that the horndog to my right is staring at my boobs. So is the gay girl to my left. I would never be friends with any of you asshole losers in real life, and I'm only near you because I'm being paid for this photo.

Middle school used to be called junior high back when I was still fresh-faced and “pleasingly plump” (or so said a scattered assortment of well-meaning adults who didn’t realize they were in fact insinuating that I would be excellent fare for a bar-b-que). Junior high was supposed to prepare students for big, bad high school—get their toes wet—without affecting actual high-school credits. A safer environment. Riiiiiiight.

Mrs. Beatrice H., the requisite resident-evil-hag-of-a-junior-high-teacher had “taught” my brother a couple of years before my extra-young ass showed up in her gifted-program science class. Only eleven-years-old when I started 7^th grade, I had an uphill battle just to survive the experience of junior high, roughly comparable to a climb up Everest in flip-flops. Without ropes. Or a Sherpa.

Mrs. H. hated me because my darling sibling’s class had tsunamied through the junior high shortly after the superintendent’s wife dreamed up the gifted program. All the mini-genii who were selected for the brainiac club were for the most part shielded from the “riff-raff” of the rest of the school (i.e., the regular kids). My brother’s class got away with criminal behavior so as not to call any unwanted negative attention to the superintendent’s wife’s creation. Of course the brilliant and bored hooligans took full advantage of their immunity. By the time my class arrived in hell-school, the jig was up, and teachers once again had permission to inflict endless torture on us newbies. Of course the teachers had a score to settle. God help the unlucky few of us who had had older smartass siblings.

From the first day of class in Mrs. H.’s room until I moved on to high school three years later, that bovine bitch had it in for me. She found out that I had a crush on David B., who happened to be her trusted pet. He didn’t have to do any actual work; he just retrieved supplies from the locked supply room for the rest of the class and retained charge of the controlled substances like fire, chemicals that could blow up, expensive machinery, and the weather and tides. (Okay. Only Mrs. Hag thought he controlled those last two.)

Once when I needed a Bunsen ® burner for an experiment, I had to visit David-at-the-counter to get a light. Mrs. Heartless put on her Cruella De Vil face, which come to think of it was always her fucking face, and sneered, “David! Light her fire.” And then she cackled all loud and evil. She delighted in my embarrassment and in the painful death of small children as she clapped and danced around the ring of fire and devil symbols and toddlers’ and puppies’ mutilated bodies I’m pretty sure she had in the back room. No matter how many long, sharp needles I drove into the eyes of her voodoo likeness, she prevailed. She was the world's oldest living mammal when she had my big brother in class, and last I heard, she is still alive, the soulless shrew.

I wish I'd had the nerve to blow up Mrs. Harpy’s chemistry lab. But the worst damage I ever exacted was that I took a test tube of iodine and shoved it all the way onto one of those cone-shaped water jets to wash it out. Mammoth mistake. The water pressure blew up the test tube, and everyone within range (i.e., in the entire classroom) was showered with permanent iodine-brown and glass shards. I am fortunate that I didn't put out a single eye. I only ruined a great deal of clothes and books and other costly supplies, AND nerded away the last couple of friends I still had. Ah. Memories.