My childhood arch enemy

Mrs. Hovagian, my fifth grade teacher.

I often joke that if Mrs. Hovagian were to cross the street in front of my car with a walker I would run her ass over. I would slow down just enough to watch her roll over my hood in slow motion; you know to fully appreciate the moment. That said, I learned alot from her, I still know most of my states and capitals, and my spelling is okay, plus she taught me that even adults can be petty. Everything you want in a teacher right?

Let me paint you a picture, I remember her vividly. Mrs. Hovagian was an older woman (I would say late fifties), she was probably in her last five years of teaching when I had the misfortune of being her student. She wore limegreen polyester pantsuits and always had her nails painted hot pink. She had a 8 inch beehive, and had probably been an attractive woman when she was younger. But what I remember most is that she was mean.

She had beautiful handwriting, and she wrote each letter just like they taught us in third grade, it perfectly matched the letters going around the top of the classroom. She even had a signature stamp; I had never seen one and that impressed me tremendously back then. She also had an electric pencil sharpener we weren't allowed to use. She gave tons of homework each week and would send a mini report card home every friday with a list of missing assignments that had to be signed. I think she liked the idea of her students being in trouble all weekend. Did I mention she was mean?

She had her fifth grade class picture blown up to about a 16 X 20 size with her little unhappy face circled. I don't know what the point was, maybe to convince us she wasn't the spawn of Satan, who knows. She frequently told us how she used to get her hands slapped with rulers for being left handed when she was young. She said that people then believed left handed people were evil; of course in her case that was true. I'm not sure why she shared that bit of personal trivia unless it was meant to be a vieled threat. Maybe it was her way of intimidating us with the possiblity of ruler abuse. Unfortunately for her I was used to being beat by another mean old lady (my Nana Esther), so she didn't really scare me. I just hated her.

My lack of fear was often my undoing, plus I felt the need to stick up for people that wouldn't or couldn't stick up for themselves. One day while we were practicing handwriting my Mrs. Hovagian came to check on our progress, this of course was not unusual. However, my classmate Gabe was doing his very best, Gabe did have atrocious hand writing but this time it looked pretty good. Mrs. Hovagian leans over me, looks at his paper and says, "When you try Gabriel, it is almost decent." He was crushed, you should have seen his face. So I made my reply, "My mom told me, if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all." She pulled me up by my arm and marched me out of the classroom, once we were in the hall she started marching me to the office while digging her talons into my arm. I told her to let me go, she didn't, so I karate chopped her arm to make her let me go. Mrs. Hovagian then called my mom and told her I struck her. My mom wasn't sure what to do so she called my Dad and I got the worst beating of my life that night. The only beating I ever got from my Dad, but let me tell you once was enough.

I couldn't sit down properly for a week, I sat in class with one leg up because I could only sit on half of one of my buttcheeks. I know she noticed, because usually she would have told me to sit right, but my guess is she knew I couldn't. She never said a word about it. Even with the perspective of adulthood, I think she enjoyed it. Lucky for her, that old Bitch never crossed a street in front of me! Can you hear my brakes screech?