the coach
When I was in high school, my algebra teacher was none other than the football coach. How he managed to also get the job as our math teacher astounded me, since he knew very little about teaching or even basic social skills. When he wasn’t busy telling me I was stupid, he was writing out reams of slips sending me to detention. Mainly for insubordination. It was hard to show respect for someone who clearly didn’t respect me.
There were rumors about coach’s locker room theatrics; throwing players against their lockers; screaming and chewing out the team after a particularly difficult loss against a major rival. Behavior that was acceptable, as long as we were winning.
I can only guess at the reason he managed to keep his job. Perhaps it had something to do with our football team’s yearly appearances at State. The year after we took state, he showed up for the first day of school in a new ‘vette.
Clearly a once-handsome man, he had the rugged, tanned good looks of a Dean Martin or some other 50’s icon. V-neck sweaters, golf shirts and a full head of hair styled in a dark pompadour that was barely dusted with silver did nothing to diminish the fantasy. But his handsome face was marred in the cruel way that only a hard drinker loses his youth. His cheeks, too rosy; his nose, a frightening festival of mushy broken capillaries.
It’s true; I wasn’t very good in math. But I hardly felt I deserved to be singled out, day after day, to have this pointed out to the rest of the class. Even kids I’d never spoken to turned around and shook their heads at me in commiseration when he chewed me out, as regularly and reliably as the mystifying Pi.
Even when I knew the answer to an equation, my raised hand was acknowledged only to tell me not to “waste” his time. A week’s worth of comments like that exploded in a none-too-quiet Goddamnit! on my end, which resulted in a handful of detention slips: insubordination and swearing were two of them. I had a problem with that last one. I’d stopped going to church in recent years and was struggling with my broken down belief system.
“I don’t know if I believe in God. So how can you call that swearing?” More grumbling and more slips being filled out. “I’m not kidding. You can’t write me up for swearing. You said damn it to hell to me five minutes ago. How can “goddamn” be any worse than that? And I didn’t say it to you, like you said it to me. I just said it to myself.” More slips and a trip to the principal’s office to explain myself.
Thankfully, only the vice principal was in. A dear man who was a sort of neighbor. He easily accepted my reasoning that if I had detention, I wouldn’t be able to catch my bus home. Frowning at the number of detention slips that I handed over, and the angry red pen that filled up the sheets of paper, he shook his head and filed them away. Unfortunately, it didn’t end there.
For the first time in my life, I had made an enemy.
Some of the football players told coach that I liked to drink the occasional beer, and then some, a fact which he gleefully relayed to our omniscient principal, a far more fearsome man than his vice counterpart. A fact which was explained to me as the reason why I couldn’t participate in a particular activity which meant a lot to me, and which I had earned. I remember sitting in the principal’s office as this was explained to me and my choking anger as I tried hard not to cry. And the vice principal’s face, as he turned to stone and stared at the floor, biting the inside of his mouth and shaking his head.
Coach was fired, eventually. Finally, some football player with a mom who didn’t think that coach’s antics were acceptable. Someone else who thought that his actions were abusive and illegal. This coupled with a year with as many losses and wins and he was out. He ended up at a small school further away, in the country. Simple internet browsing netted an unofficial online forum for the school that warned kids against angering him, because he’d “never let it go.” He’s still coaching football. Probably still terrorizing kids in math class.
The last I heard, they were on one hell of a winning streak.
There were rumors about coach’s locker room theatrics; throwing players against their lockers; screaming and chewing out the team after a particularly difficult loss against a major rival. Behavior that was acceptable, as long as we were winning.
I can only guess at the reason he managed to keep his job. Perhaps it had something to do with our football team’s yearly appearances at State. The year after we took state, he showed up for the first day of school in a new ‘vette.
Clearly a once-handsome man, he had the rugged, tanned good looks of a Dean Martin or some other 50’s icon. V-neck sweaters, golf shirts and a full head of hair styled in a dark pompadour that was barely dusted with silver did nothing to diminish the fantasy. But his handsome face was marred in the cruel way that only a hard drinker loses his youth. His cheeks, too rosy; his nose, a frightening festival of mushy broken capillaries.
It’s true; I wasn’t very good in math. But I hardly felt I deserved to be singled out, day after day, to have this pointed out to the rest of the class. Even kids I’d never spoken to turned around and shook their heads at me in commiseration when he chewed me out, as regularly and reliably as the mystifying Pi.
Even when I knew the answer to an equation, my raised hand was acknowledged only to tell me not to “waste” his time. A week’s worth of comments like that exploded in a none-too-quiet Goddamnit! on my end, which resulted in a handful of detention slips: insubordination and swearing were two of them. I had a problem with that last one. I’d stopped going to church in recent years and was struggling with my broken down belief system.
“I don’t know if I believe in God. So how can you call that swearing?” More grumbling and more slips being filled out. “I’m not kidding. You can’t write me up for swearing. You said damn it to hell to me five minutes ago. How can “goddamn” be any worse than that? And I didn’t say it to you, like you said it to me. I just said it to myself.” More slips and a trip to the principal’s office to explain myself.
Thankfully, only the vice principal was in. A dear man who was a sort of neighbor. He easily accepted my reasoning that if I had detention, I wouldn’t be able to catch my bus home. Frowning at the number of detention slips that I handed over, and the angry red pen that filled up the sheets of paper, he shook his head and filed them away. Unfortunately, it didn’t end there.
For the first time in my life, I had made an enemy.
Some of the football players told coach that I liked to drink the occasional beer, and then some, a fact which he gleefully relayed to our omniscient principal, a far more fearsome man than his vice counterpart. A fact which was explained to me as the reason why I couldn’t participate in a particular activity which meant a lot to me, and which I had earned. I remember sitting in the principal’s office as this was explained to me and my choking anger as I tried hard not to cry. And the vice principal’s face, as he turned to stone and stared at the floor, biting the inside of his mouth and shaking his head.
Coach was fired, eventually. Finally, some football player with a mom who didn’t think that coach’s antics were acceptable. Someone else who thought that his actions were abusive and illegal. This coupled with a year with as many losses and wins and he was out. He ended up at a small school further away, in the country. Simple internet browsing netted an unofficial online forum for the school that warned kids against angering him, because he’d “never let it go.” He’s still coaching football. Probably still terrorizing kids in math class.
The last I heard, they were on one hell of a winning streak.
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