You are CORRECT! (F-You, Mrs. Murphy!)

When I was in 3rd grade, I had a horrible hag of a teacher named Mrs. Murphy. Her way of teaching students their times-tables was to publicly humiliate those that didn't memorize the charts up to 14X14 and publicly reward those who did by taking them out to McDonald's for lunch.

Let's just say this: I didn't get to go out to lunch that year.

My math skills were pretty average, but the constant screaming and verbal abuse from Mrs. Murphy seemed to set me back further, mathematically. It was like I got brain-freeze when I thought about doing multiplication/division/addition/subtraction. I just locked up and couldn't recite my times-tables.

One school day, Mrs. Murphy said to me in a deliberately loud voice, "Girls aren't as good as boys at math, and you're worse than most." I have a witness to this statement who will back me up on this 100%. Can you believe that a person calling herself a TEACHER would say that to a child? She succeeded in giving me a fear of math that has lasted throughout my whole life.

As previously mentioned, I've been working on a fundraiser project for Thing1's school. The woman who was supposed to supervise the fundraiser found out that her husband was returning home (after a year in Iraq) during the middle of this fundraiser. She begged me to take her place because she knew she'd be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest and wouldn't be able to concentrate on the minutia of tallying orders and counting checks/cash and placing the order so that the correct number/type of items arrives to be distributed. I said 'yes', but with trepidation... I'd have to be dealing with MONEY and that means MATH.

Cut to the chase: my enormous pizza fundraiser tallied out PERFECTLY. My cash intake was correctly tallied, the different amounts of the 20 different products were counted and ordered correctly. Even the school's profits were spot-on! I was dealing with THOUSANDS of dollars and I got it right on the first shot! I am so proud of myself--as well as relieved that it's over and all I have to do is help distribute pizzas and deposit the checks.

The moral of the story: one bad teacher can't ruin your life, but they can continue to hurt you in painful little ways. It can be overcome!

Have you ever had a really AWFUL teacher? Your very own Mrs. (or Mr.) Murphy? Do tell!

Postscript: To continue this tale of terror, I was assigned to Mrs. Murphy for 4th grade, as well! She "moved up" with us. I was in mortal fear of this woman every day for 2 months, and then one day, she wasn't in class and we had a substitute. We were informed that, "Mrs. Murphy has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and will be out for the rest of the school year pending treatment." It was like the finger of FATE had descended to say, "You going to get what's coming to you...."