2003-07-15 - 7:53 p.m.
"Acts of injustice done/ Between the setting and rising sun/ In history lie like bones, each one.� The Ascent of F.6 (quote beginning chapter 21 of Watership Down)
My mother has told me on several occasions that I make a horrible second-in-command. She says it�s because I don�t accept authority. She�s probably correct. But there�s more to the problem than that.
I would rather be powerless than be in the position of having some power�but not enough.
I�ve been in that position before. That�s why I know just how much I hate being there. I�ve been teacher�s aide to the teacher infamous for her favoritism. Hell, I�ve been teacher�s aide to the teacher infamous for her favoritism when her own nephew was in her class. It�s a precarious position, trying to do what�s right without really pissing off the authority.
I usually end up pissing off the authority. Erring on the side of caution isn�t my style.
Last Thursday, I was in that position again.
I spent several weeks interning at the local children�s theater group�s summer program. At the end of each session, the children give a presentation for their parents to show off what they have been doing in the program. The program runs like a school, with classes and a schedule. Two of the classes are Contemporary Scene Study and Classical Scene Study. For the presentation, both Scene Study classes do scenes from plays. Theoretically, every child is supposed to be cast in a speaking role only in either the Contemporary scene or the Classical scene. In any case, every child must be cast in a speaking role.
Last Thursday marked the last day before presentations for my two week, sixth and seventh grade class. The Contemporary and Classical teachers had decided who would be cast in what. Pete, one of the kids in my group, was thrilled to find out that he had gotten the role he wanted in Contemporary. He was in state of high excitement throughout the day.
Until we got to the last hour of the day.
Contemporary Scene Study.
Annie, the teacher, asked the children who had been cast to run through their scene. Unfortunately, for two days Annie had had the class work on a different scene. Needless to say, the scene was a horrible flop.
Annie was enraged.
After giving the class an angry lecture about knowing their blocking, she asked to see the other scene on which the class had been working. The scene had been cast doubly, so that each child had a speaking part in one cast or the other. (The blocking was the same for both groups.) Annie watched both casts, then announced that she had made her decision.
�We�ll do that scene instead,� she stated. �Cast B will perform.�
I immediately saw the problem. Two children were now left without any speaking parts. I also immediately saw a way to remedy the problem. After Annie quieted the loudly protesting children, I pointed out the problem and solution to her. She waved me away saying that it was �too much of a headache.�
If there is only one thing I have learned as an intern/teacher�s aide, it is that an aide should never, ever undermine the authority of the teacher.
So I sat down and shut up, trusting her to deal with the problem.
Bad move.
Annie substituted one of the children into the scene to replace a girl with a Classical part. She did not substitute Pete into the scene.
So while the people with speaking parts rehearsed their lines, Pete sat in the corner and cried.
I talked to him tried to calm him down, but nothing I said helped. Finally, I approached Annie again and pointed out, as gently and as quietly as I could, that Pete had no part.
�That is not my problem,� she said coldly.
�But...� I began
She stared me straight in the face and snapped loudly enough for Pete to hear, �I have not been impressed with the way Pete has been acting today.�
I stepped back in surprise. I had thought that she hadn�t realized that Pete hadn�t been cast, that she had made a simple mistake.
But now I knew that this was no mistake.
This was malice.
And, being a mere intern, there was nothing I could do about it.
Rarely do I get so angry I actually start to cry, but I did then. I left the room, walked off down the hallway, and threw a tearful fit of rage. It was a long time before I was composed enough to take my group on to the end-of-day ritual, and it was a far longer time, until long after I had dinner, before I was actually calm. I did manage to calm myself enough to explain to the headmaster what had happened, but that was about it. During the ritual, I explained my tears as a realization that I was about to outgrow the program and that I might never see my group again.
Acting pays off.
Well, the story does have a happy ending. Pete did get a part in the Classical piece. I only saw Annie once afterward. She tried to give me a cold shoulder. (I am proud to say that however hard I may have thought the words, �Fuck you, lady,� I never actually said them. For me, that�s an extreme of self-restraint.)
My parents told me that I had handled the situation well by keeping my cool and telling the headmaster. Maybe I did.
But damn, do I hate being second-in-command!
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