I have some teachers in my family. As we come to the end of the school year their eyes have taken on a strange gleam. Those of us who work all year envy them having a whole summer to do anything they please. If you have,(or had) a job requiring your presence for 12 months of the years with a week or two for vacation, the word we are looking at is JEALOUSY.

But consider this; if you had to condense all 12 months of work into a 9 month period and get out a very large and specific work load and get it done while under the scrutiny of your peers, supervisors and the consumers of your product, would you still be envious?

Unless you live in Utopia or have had home schooling, you have had some memorable teachers. Some for the way they could make you understand some mystic concept, Algebra maybe? Others were memorable for the way they could make brain cells die as soon as they spoke....Algebra, for instance. If we never had the bad ones could we recognize the good ones?

Please understand I was not an honor student. The one thing I excelled at was playing hooky. I was good at writing my own excuse notes, (Thanks to my English teachers, or some of them.) My notes were very believable. The fact that I could spell words like "Bronchitis" and "Pneumonia" made it so much more adult sounding. My mom was a medical secretary and I had aced 8th grade Latin. I even disguised my handwriting to a flowing Palmer Penmanship. I thought that was how an educated mother should write. (When I became a mother myself I found my handwriting was more like?????????) I blew it in 9th grade when I actually was sick for a week.

My mother wrote the excuse note---"Please excuse Swampetta for November 18,19,20,21&22. She had a bad cold with a fever and cough. Thank you, Mrs. Swampetta Sr."

Now I would have worded it differently. " To Whom It May Concern; Please Excuse Swampetta for the Week of November 18 through the 22. She was suffering from Double Pneumoneio with a highly elevated temperature and a Deep Bronchial Cough. She is now able to resume her school activities with the exception of Gym. Thank You for your kind attention in the matter, Sincerely , Mrs. Swampetta Sr." ( I had always put in the exception of gym class. EEEWWW! hated Gym!!!)

For some reason, the Vice-Principal Mr. Fancher,(who I KNOW rests in peace.) happened to notice the lack of embellishments. AND HE CALLED ME ON IT!!!------

As I stood in front of his desk and he held out the NOTE, flapping it in my general direction. He demanded to know who had written it! I got very indignant because,(for once) she HAD written it. "My mother wrote that!" I huffed. He gave me an evil smile and replied, "We,ll just see about that young lady. I am going to call her." I was still filled with the righteous anger of the unduly accused. "You go right ahead and call her Mr. Fancher. She will tell you that she wrote it!" Sticking out my mental tongue and blowing a Bronx cheer at him. He got her on the phone and she told him that she had written it. HA! He now looked like a flat tire. I had on this prissy face with a tight lipped smirk. They traded some nicey-nice remarks on the weather and how it affects young people. And then my world came to a screeching halt. He said "She's been out sick a lot since school started. Almost 2 or 3 times a week. Does she have some chronic medical problem?" The silence was not golden. It seemed to last hours until she said, "What? She was only out last week." He suddenly lost the flat tire look and he pulled out a handful of papers from a folder. OH LORD? SEND ME AN EARTHQUAKE!...PLEASE?? They were my earliest collection of fiction. My "out-sick" notes. He read the dates to her and she confirmed that to her knowledge, I was not out on those dates. They discussed options and both agreed that I needed to spend more time in school.

Mr. Fancher had a twisted sense of humor. He looked through the notes and graded them. Spelling= A+....Grammar & Punctuation= A.... Penmanship...A+...Detention= 3 weeks. I did learn a lesson. I learned the devil is in the details. If he hadn't noticed the handwriting was not the lovely, calligraphic script I had always used on the psuedo notes, he would have not read the words as closely. I never made that mistake again.

The next year I was in a different school so even if my mother had written the note.. I copied it so all the notes would look the same. I also removed most of the flummery I had been using and cut out the Latin terms.

If I was willing to take on the Vice- Principal in my Con Artistry, the teachers were a bigger target. They didn't have enough time to run a full scale investigation into my homework. The only ones I didn't try to get over on were the ones I liked.

I loved Art class! It was so undemanding and disorganized it fit me like spandex. The teacher was a lovely Quaker woman in her late forties. She felt that if you thought that you had created ART, Well, ART it was! In that class I worked!! Pastels, watercolors, oil, pencil, clay, anything at all was good for me. If we had asked for a class trip to carve faces in the Watchung mountains? She would have hired a bus! No one ever got lower than a 'C' from her. Even the rough, tough ones who only made an ashtray that vaguely resembled body parts,,, Got an 'A'. The only way you got a 'C' was if you never helped clean up before the bell. Miss Hammond taught me more than how to blend colors or how to shape a leaf. I learned patience from her. Even though I didn't put it to use for quite a few years.

Two years after having her for art, I had her extreme opposite. Mr. 'G', (I won't use his name as he may have had a family) was the most anal retentive, egotistical snob I ever met! For the first week of his class he showed us his "Creative Interpretations". He was into landscapes and loved putting red barns in most of his "Works". As he was giving his mini-tour of his own Louvre, he announced; "I work in oils." And my flapping tongue stage-whispered; "That's why he looks like a dipstick." I always stayed in the back of the room so I could hide in the crowd.

The second week he drew a tree and hung it in the front of the room. He said; "I want you all to draw me a tree using this as your guideline." He must've invented the Xerox copier because he wanted an exact duplicate of his tree. It was a winter tree. It had a lot of zig-zag branches and a few withered leaves. I had drawn a summer tree. Lots of bushy, green leaves and a few birds in it. It earned me a 'D'. Which was the highest mark he ever gave me.

Remember how certain teachers would chose a "Teachers' Pet"? You didn't get angry at the teacher but you made life hell for the 'Pet'. I have visualized many times what happened to the 'Pet' when they grew up. Axe murderers, Ass kissers of the first order and even Enron Executives. If I was ever a teachers' pet, (And I doubt it) They were the kind of person that keeps lions and tigers unchained and uncaged in the front yard.

If I had gotten on the debating team I would have copped a letter sweater. I dearly loved to ask a challenging question and then question the answer. Most of the ones I did this to had 2 reactions: #1 "Sit down & Shut up!"------#2 "Go to the principals' office!"

The smarter ones had a very effective ploy. They would say; "You may have a very valid point. Come back here after 3 PM and we will discuss it at length." Whoops! Not that important.

Our school had the Principal and Vice-Principals' offices in adjoining rooms with a small foyer between them. In this space there were about 4 or 5 chairs (for the condemned and their parents) and a student desk. I spent so much time in that foyer in that desk that some people thought I was a receptionist. The conversations I overheard in that spot almost gave me a career choice. No, not receptionist!!! EXTORTIONIST!!! I was upset when I was told I could go back to class but if I got tossed out of that class again I would face detention. That I didn't want because I had already spent so much time in detention. If I had added up the hours in there I would have had the equivalent of a PhD in Social Unrest. The teachers took turns doing detention duty. I have always been convinced that they had done something politically incorrect to deserve it. It was held in an old room in the building shaped like an amphitheater. They say at the bottom of this well of misery and would say things like; "The only thing I want to hear is the sound of homework being done." (And if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make any noise?) They would sit at the desk and proceed to mark their class papers. We were supposed to be there until 4pm. Only one miserable, old man ever kept us there that long. He would sit and stare at us. He would drum his fingers on the desk and he never blinked in the whole 60 minutes. I never had him for a class but his reputation was global.

Being females we had Home Economics. Cooking and Sewing was taught by a red haired munchkin. She kept calling us "Future wives and mothers". And that was the only profession she saw us as being suited for. At the end of the cooking semester we had to prepare and serve a luncheon for some of the chosen people. The Principal, Vice-Principal, School Nurse, a few teachers who were close or should have been in retirement, members of the Board of Education, You KNOW who I mean! These were almost Karmic pay backs for some of us. We added to the standard ingredients just to " Kick it up a notch". Little extras we brought from home. Did you know that Ex-Lax blends nicely with chocolate icing? And Jalapeno peppers can put a "BAM!!" in macaroni salad. I heard that someone put denture powder in a pie crust but no one saw it and they never could prove it. That was the last year for the "Honored Guest Luncheon". The next class had to eat the stuff they made themselves and it cut out a lot of exotic flavors. We had gained a nickname. 'Lucrezia Borgias' Raunchy Restaurant'. I think a History teacher came up with that one because who else would have known about a famous medieval poisoner?

In sewing class we were to make organdy aprons with heart-shaped pockets and fluffy ruffles. Our teacher suggested that they would make lovely mother's day gifts. There was the fact that if we were going to give them to out mothers they should at least RESEMBLE aprons!

She gave us a deadline of the first week of May and if you finished it before that you would be given heavy linen napkins to hem. For one of the first times in my life, I had an ADVANTAGE!

My Aunt Bette worked in the NYC garment district making sample dresses for world famous designers. My Grandma had been teaching me how to sew since I could walk. I made a nice piece of change making aprons for my fellow students at 3$ a pop. I could run up 2 or more a night. The only thing they had to do was the hand sewing on the hem and that took a while. I didn't give my mom an apron that year. (Come to think of it, Mom was NOT the apron type.)

I had enough money to buy her stockings, perfume and a mega-sized box of chocolates. The spoils of war.....

My next attempt at higher education was 16 years later. Nursing School. We didn't have teachers, we had "Instructors". Most of the people in my class had a few extra years on them and were no strangers to making ends meet. We had a total of 4 instructors. I liked one, tolerated one, despised one and worshipped Ms. Heilman. She was about my age, divorced and had kids, just like me! She was the kind of person who will explain things as many times as needed until she sees the lights go on. On the other end of the scale was Ms. "D" who taught by the book.

It was probably the only book she ever touched and obsolete enough to have become a 'Curio'.

Florence Nightingale would have looked at it and used it to straighten the leg on the coffee table.

One day we, the class, was having an informal discussion of open heart surgery. There had been an article on it in the paper and someone asked Ms. "D" how they did it. Her reply was very long and the kind of talking that puts you in a coma. Her explanation led us to believe that heart surgery was performed very rapidly, between beats. I wish I had taped her lecture on Human Reproduction and Diseases of the Genitalia. She thought that birth control was quite a complicated subject and involved phases of the moon. I had the poor judgment to ask how birth control pills worked. She agreed it was something worthy of research and assigned me to do a paper on it. Here I stood, a prime example of 'Foot in Mouth Disease'. Keep in mind this was before the Internet so it took a lot more effort than it would today. I was determined to find as much information as possible. I haunted the medical library. I harassed the pharmacist. I wrote it like I was going for a combination Pulitzer and Nobel prize. When I handed it to her she glanced at it, hefted it in her hand for weight and plopped it on her desk. I never saw it again.

When I asked her what my grade was on it, she smiled. "That was for your own information. It was not a class assignment so there is no grade." My perception of her has changed over the years. She was not really a bad teacher. Her method was, "If you want it, There it is. Go and get it." It's a sure bet that if it was a class assignment I would never have worked that hard on it.

My last experience in the groves of academia was about 4 years ago. As part of being unemployed, I was offered re-training. I said, "Let me at it!!!" I got 4 months of computer training for administrative assistant. Whatever,,,, I did learn that there were real names for the things I already knew how to do. Instead of calling it; "That number thingy-ma-jig" It was Access. We had a cross section of ages and skill levels in those classes. We also had instructors who if they don't get into heaven will surely have a prized air-conditioned box seat in hell.

Mrs. Russum, who we had for PowerPoint and all of us passed with flying colors. Her method was if you asked how to do something, she reached over you and hit the keyboard with lightning speed. "OK, That's how it's done. Moving along now...." She gave herself good grades. Mr. Whalen, Business Math--- ignored the fact that I, (inummerate moron) sat in the back of the room and used a forbidden pocket calculator. He also tacked on extra credit questions on current events in case my batteries went dead. We also had him for Business and he gave me an 'A' on my project. My project was how to run a money laundering business in the Cayman Islands. It wasn't all facetious. Then there was Mr. Willy, The Director. We met on many occasions when we were having a cigarette in the 'Cittone Leper Colony'. I think he was up to 5 packs a day when we graduated. These people don't get the summer off. Cittone runs all year.

The next time you think teachers have it made in the shade ask yourself, 'Is 2 and 1/2 months long enough to forget what's coming in September?' The new school uniform will be plaid Kevlar vests and the school mascot is BoBo the Bomb-sniffing dog.

TEACHERS? I APPLAUD YOU ALL! KEEP ON KEEPING ON!

Thanx to Brenda, Terry-Pat, Amanda, Beth, Iris, Greg, Carol The Staff of Cittone

Anyone who ever had me in a class.