Long story short: He inadvertently destroyed the teeny shred of confidence my 12-year-old self might have had and said I was worthless. I’ve proved him wrong. Should I try to find him and tell him he was wrong?
Here’s the deal: seventh grade was hell for me. I wouldn’t be diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder for several years, but that was probably the worst psychological state I was ever in. I literally had no friends at school. I was borderline suicidal. I had a speech problem, was the worst type of nerd, put up with constant bullying. Most of my teachers had taught my sister and expected me to be like her - straight A’s, a ‘team player’, naturally bright, always follows the rules, motivated. I was pretty much the opposite of all of that.
The absolute worst was math class. I hated Mr. K. I hated algebra. He did not hide his contempt for me. I was not naturally good at math, and did not work terribly hard, therefore I was a waste of time. I don’t remember the context, but he once told me, when I asked if maybe I could re-take a test I’d done poorly on, that I would never amount to anything, and that if he could, he would kick me out of his class and down into basic-skills math. On another occasion he called me a total failure.
Here is my most vivid memory of seventh grade, which despite my best efforts, I’m unable to forget: I was called on to give the answer to a homework question. I hadn’t been able to solve it, and said so. He told me to finish it now, and I said I didn’t know how. He said everyone else in the class did, we’d gone over it a number of times, and we’d wait until I solved it. A few kids in the class started laughing at me. I began to stammer a bit as I tried to answer: “Um…uh…”
Mr. K, to the tremendous amusement of the class, began to mock me by imitation. “Um, um, um.”
After a few more seconds, I felt a panic attack coming on, grabbed my books and ran out of class, spending the remainder of the period sitting hyperventilating, and then crying, on the bathroom floor. Nothing was ever said, by anyone, about the incident.
So, basically, Mr. K was kind of a dick, and I was a spineless little kid who was bad at math and didn’t think to ask him to stop, or to complain to my parents, or anything. Failure all around.
Fast-forward ten years to today. I am now 22. I am in my senior year of college. I have not made any particular impact on the world, but I haven’t been a total failure. I was accepted to a decent college. I have lived, alone, in two different foreign countries. I’ve held down full-time jobs, learned how to speak mostly without stammering, dated wonderful people, held down a part-time job while going to school full time…and, oh, yes, I’m now in my fourth year of college-level math and I’m studying quantum mechanics. My parents have not given up on me, which I imagine means I’m not, in fact, a total failure.
He was wrong. If I’d had the spine to argue with him then, I would have been right. And for some reason, I have a perverse urge to see if he hasn’t kicked the bucket yet, and if not, send him a nicely-written nastygram telling him that he was a horrible math teacher, pretty much a jerk, and most importantly, he was quite wrong about me.
On the other hand, that’s immature and petty. If he is still around he’ll be in his seventies, and going through any sort of effort to call a seventy-year-old man a jerk is just…well, a jerkish move. One that would be deeply satisfying, but still…I don’t know how satisfying I’d find it once I put that letter in the mail.
So there’s my conundrum. For some reason I’m unable to get it out of my mind lately. Again, on some level I should just let it go - because seriously, holding a grudge from when I was 12 is just lame - but another part of me really wants to rub where I am now in his face.
Opinions, thoughts, suggestions, ‘been there done that’ stories, advice to stop fixating on seventh grade - any of that is welcome.
