Reply #14: The dean had my mom on speed dial [View All]

[Nevernose]

Oh, my poor parents! It must have been such a nightmare for them! They were good parents, I love them dearly and we're very close now, but as a teenager, there were so many other problems that I was often an afterthought.

The ironic thing is, these days I'm a teacher, and I'm the one handing out the punishments. I don't hand out that many, because I don't really need to. Yes, I work at a pretty bad school where discipline problems are the norm, but I found out in my first ten minutes that if you want love, tolerance, and respect, you have to be the first one to give it, and once you start giving it, you can't ever stop. No matter how much you want to choke the little monsters sometimes. A lack of pretentiousness helps, too.

And thank god for the punishments. In all seriousness, if it weren't for the constant harping, lecturing, detentioning, phone-calling, and occasional handcuffing, I would be in a much worse place today, and I certainly would not have graduated high school. Sure, I had a 1.6 GPA, but it was on time and with all honors/AP classes.

Without a lot of positive reinforcement at home, getting punished was one of the few ways I had to gain self-esteem; getting punished was one of the few ways I ever saw that someone cared about me.

Most of us incorrigible ones end up corrigible after all. But for some of us it just takes longer.