While we were in middle school the special ed department was trying
to fully mainstream their students so that they were more included in
the school experience. The problem was everyone knew they were the
special ed kids and that made them easy targets for mockery. Mr.
Black was not overly excited about having some extra work placed in
his class so he was more or less openly hostile towards the special
needs kids and would segregate them to desks at the back of the class
with different work than the rest of us. The problem was that special
ed had no distinction between kids that were a little slow and those
that were fetal alcohol syndrome and various forms of mental
retardation. Which meant that some of the kids were not going to
catch up with a little extra help but others would. Mr. Black didn't
seem to mind the quite ones but if they were dumb and disruptive he
was from the old school of education which emphasized belittlement
and yelling. One day one of the special ed girls named Faye was
being particularly disruptive and Mr. Black yelled at her and
insulted her but quickly thereafter had to leave the room to take a
call and Faye was set on revenge. She went up to his desk and took
the lid off of his water bottle and coughed up something and spit it
in, instant karma and whatnot. Mr. Black came back and no one told
him anything and we let him take a big drink of justice which was
when he discovered something was amiss. His water was more slimy and
chunky than usual and he started right in with the accusations but it
didn't take long to find the culprit because Faye say she hated him
and ran out. We waited until Mr. Black had left the room in hot
pursuit before we laughed and retold the highlights to each other.
Faye was not welcome back in class but there has to be some kind of
intelligence math that tells you where you stand when you are
outsmarted by the special ed girl.
