CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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The French Class Substitute Teacher Story

Friday, May 23, 2008

this entry brought to you by r.e.m, "sing for the submarine"


When I was in high school, we had this substitute teacher very frequently named Mr. O. When I was a sophomore I'd say I had him a total of maybe eight times in the first semester alone. When teachers got sick, they would frequently ask specifically for Mr. O. He was a pretty nice guy, an interesting looking fellow of about 50 years of age who kind of looked like what you would imagine a fully grown leprechaun would look like. He wasn't a dwarf or anything, he was about 5'5", maybe 5'6", but he had the look of a leprechaun. He would also wear these plaid vests, which were kind of his trademark look.

He was substituting for my French teacher on the Friday of Homecoming, which was supposed to be that night. We were watching Beauty and the Beast in French, and I don't remember exactly what it was that he was saying-- he would pause the movie and tell us things of importance, because he actually had knowledge of French-- and he came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze, then walked away, still talking.

Here's the thing. I was familair enough with Mr. O that this didn't freak me out. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility for him to squeeze my shoulder and not have it be weird. As a guy, sometimes older guys will do these kinds of things. If you're a waiter, they might reach out and put their hand on your arm and say, "Could you put that guacamole on the side? Thanks a lot, sport." Or if you're in line at the grocery store they might strike up a conversation with you, then grab your shoulder and tell you you're a good sport. Old guys are grabby, and I'm sure they're grabby to girls, too, and this is probably really fucking creepy and makes your skin crawl. But as a dude, you think to yourself, hey, he's old, old guys do that. Once you reach a certain age you're just allowed to grab the shoulders and arms of younger men.

With that said, when Mr. O. put his hand on my shoulder, I specifically thought, What the fuck was that? It wasn't enough to freak me out, again, I was familair with him, so I put the question out of my head. But I did specifically notice it, did specifically feel weird about it, but disregarded it.

The next Monday it was all the news. Mr. O molested a kid at our school. He was a chaperon for the Homecoming dance, and he took the boy he was chaperoning back to his place when they dropped off his date, and at some time during the night, he performed oral sex on this 15 year old boy, and then had the boy perform oral sex on him.

If this had happened, say, four months after he pawed my shoulder, I probably would have not even remembered it. But he molested the boy that very night as the squeeze on my shoulder, and holy shit, did I feel creeped out. I didn't need therapy or anything, but the thought of, did that fucking guy think about raping me? definitely came to mind. When we all learned about this and we were in French class, my friend Gina, who sat next to me during class, told me that even she noticed the shoulder squeeze, and got really creeped out when she learned about the molestation.
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with love from CRS @ 4:41 AM 

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