“Toby Metcalf!” thundered Mrs Thomas. “Are you insulting my intelligence with this effort!?”
It had been a simple request. Mrs Thomas, covering Mr Ellison’s art class, had tasked the students to colour in a black and white drawing of a king standing outside his castle. Whilst the kids scribbled on their printed copies with coloured pencils, she had marched between desks, sniffing out any miss-behavers.
“I want normal colours,” she boomed, “no purple grass or orange skies, realism is your goal!”
A few naughty boys winced as Mrs Thomas slapped her ruler against their knuckles for scribbling rude drawings on their sheets, but when she saw what Toby Metcalfe had done, she exploded.
“Magenta skies?” she barked, holding up his drawing for the entire class to gawk. “Pewter grass? Toby, are you deliberately disobedient or just not very bright?”
And Toby, being the class spaz, looked as if he wanted his mother to come rescue him.
Mrs Thomas would, of course, deny that she enjoyed punishing her students. She’d admit that disciplining them gave her a certain thrill, not that it was a matter of sadism but improving their character.
Tough love was still love after all, and if they didn’t get it from their mollycoddling parents, they’d certainly get it from her. The dim-witted Toby was decidedly mollycoddled, so she laid into him with a stern lecture, praising the virtues of discipline and respect. The terrified boy shot glances at his classmates’ faces for support, but they, having been granted a teacher sanctioned license to sneer, didn’t give much sympathy. If anything, it made them hate him more.
When recess rolled around, and the kids ran out onto the schoolyard, things went a little differently, however. Toby Metcalf was to be found sulking in a corner, looking lost but was soon bewildered when a few of the more rebellious kids came up to him.
Ian Barrett, always in detention for smoking, said: “You really gave it to old bat. That drawing of yours got under her skin. Good on you, Tob, good on you.”
And Jonathan Webber, born with the manners of a seventy-year-old, waddled over and gushed: “I must congratulate you on your colouring choices, unconventional but bold and striking all the same.”
Toby didn’t return the smile, but frowned. “But I did everything she me told to,” he pleaded “I drew the grass green and the skies blue. What did I do wrong?”
