When you're teaching you find your pupils fall into a wide variety. The mass of them are in the middle of the curve, learning an average amount at an average rate and getting average results. At either end you have the extremes. One extreme are those who learn by glancing at the textbook at the start of the year and absorbing all the information therein by a sort of osmosis. They're fun to teach. The other extreme are the pupils where you're drilling through dense bone trying to get through to them. All too often once you've drilled through the bone you find only empty air on the other side, having missed their miniscule brain entirely.
Finally there are the wild cards – the most frustrating people of the lot. You know they've got a brain, you've seen them use it. They should be up there with the over-achievers, but they're in nowhere land, with you never knowing just how much they have absorbed.
It's especially infuriating when you have a student who has been putting in an effort and achieving high marks just to have them suddenly go cold on you. You have to start digging around in their juvenile psyches to find where their train of thought became derailed.
I was currently having trouble with a pupil like that. Helen was a bright young girl who had sailed easily through all her grades and was due to graduate this year. When I say young girl I guess I should say young woman. She's turned eighteen and should be looking to what she's going to do after school. She should be considering university or gainful employment, not stuffing around and threatening to fail.
She was an artist of some ability. Better than me, I have to admit, and I was the art teacher and not a bad artist in my own right. Helen, however, had that touch of genius that has never marred my pictures. Now she was doing daubs and trash and I was infuriated. I was going to have to speak to her and see if I could get to the bottom of the problem. I'd already checked other teachers and she was doing badly across the board. The reason I was nominated to talk to her was because art was her best subject and the other teachers were only too happy to foist the problem onto my shoulders.
I decided to set up a little project for Helen to work on; something that would earn her extra credit for her art. I was damned if the best student I'd had for ages was going to fail just because she was going through some sort of emotional crisis.
Helen's art class was the last period of the day. I was in the art room before the students began straggling in. I saw Helen enter and she flicked a glance towards me and seemed to wince and turn away. What the hell, I wondered? I shrugged and called her over, then informed her I'd like her to stay after class as I had some things I needed to discuss with her. On hearing that she paled slightly and nodded, seeming extremely nervous. Just what was her problem?
After the class was over I noticed Helen looking at the door and dithering about, leaving me with the distinct impression that she was going to bolt and pretend she'd forgotten to see me. I caught her eye and indicated the chair in front of my table and this time she visibly cringed before slouching over to sit down with a defeated expression. Very humbling to me. I hadn't realised that I was such an ogre.
As soon as the stragglers had departed I sat opposite Helen and gently asked her if she had any problems. She just shook her head and was mute. I explained carefully that the teachers were here to help if something was bothering her. Maybe she'd like to talk to one of the women teachers. Again a head shake and not a word.
I pointed out the signs that something was wrong. Her poor performance academically, when we all knew she could do a lot better. Would it help if I or someone else talked to her parents? Apparently not.
Damned if I knew how to get through to her. I was damned certain that yelling wouldn't help. She'd probably collapse in tears and I'd feel the ogre she seemed to regard me as.
"Well," I finally said, "you may fail some of your other classes but I'm damned if you're going to fail art. I have an extra assignment that I want you to do to make up marks. Come and see what I've set up and I'll explain what I want you to do."
I rose and started towards the storeroom where we kept our art supplies, expecting her to follow me. She just cowered in her chair and wasn't going to budge. I turned and waited and she finally spoke.
"Please," she said, in little more than a whisper. "I don't want to be raped."
I blinked at that. There was a statement that had come out of nowhere. I returned to my chair and sat down.
"I'm sure you don't," I said in a soothing voice. "Ah, who's threatening to rape you?" Someone was going to be sorted out in short order.
"Um, you are, aren't you?" she whispered.
Well, there was a turn up for the books. I was now starting to wonder about her mental health.
"Well, it's not on my current to-do list," I said carefully. "What makes you think I am?"
"I saw you doing it?"
"Excuse me? You saw me doing what?" I know damn well that there was no way she'd seen me having sex with anyone, consensual or otherwise. What did she think she'd seen?
"I saw you raping me," she explained.
"Oh. You saw me raping you. Ah, and just when did this take place? I seem to have forgotten about it."
"It hasn't happened yet," she snapped, starting to get angry, "and you know it. You must have it planned for the future."
"You've lost me," I conceded. "Can you explain slowly and carefully, in words that I can understand, why you're of the firm belief that I'm going to rape you. Do you believe other men are going to rape you as well?"
"There's no-one else," she said. "Just you, and it's not fair."
"Elucidate," I cajoled, circling my hands in a gathering motion, indicating I needed more information.
"I saw you doing it in a dream," she told me. "I'm psychic and I have prophetic dreams. You must have guessed that I'm psychic. I've seen you looking at me after you've looked at some of my pictures where I've painted a dream."
Actually I hadn't dreamed that she thought she was psychic. Thinking of some of her odder paintings I was willing to concede that maybe she was.
"So, you've worked yourself into a state because you saw me raping you sometime in the future, thus interfering with your studies and letting your grades down. Did it occur to you that the dream may not be a vision?"
"I did the first time. I ignore single dreams as I don't trust them. But I've had this one several times so it must be going to come true."
How do you argue with a psychic? If they knew it, they knew it. Maybe interpretation was the key.
"So, assuming that you saw me having intimate relations with you, how do you know it was rape? Couldn't it have been consensual?"
"What? Do you think I'd agree to have sex with you?" she protested.
"Oh, my poor ego," I mourned. "It was just a thought. Do all your visions come true? It's really not in my plans to have to rape you and I hate having to change my plans."
"I can't help that," she grumbled. "I know what I saw."
I leaned back, considering the situation.
"Tell me, how far does the vision go before you wake up?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do I just pounce on you and you wake up before things get interesting or do you suffer the whole experience from start until I walk away laughing, leaving your ravished body lying there."
"It's not funny," she snapped.
"Do I look like I'm laughing? How far do your visions go?"
"Not right to the end," she muttered. "I generally scream and wake up just as you're about to take me."
"Well, that's a relief, in a way. Still humbling to think I'm such a poor lover that you scream and wake up, but one can't have everything. A solution suggests itself."
"If it means you rape me today, forget it," she said, sounding quite determined.
"I'm not going to rape you at all," I pointed out. "However, there's nothing to stop us playing our roles up to the point where you wake up. Your vision comes true but stops short at the point where you wake up, so you don't get raped. Maybe that way you'll be able to concentrate on your blasted schoolwork."
"What? Do you mean you'll start to attack me and then stop at the right moment? How do I know you'll stop?"
"No. I mean I'll make moves as though I'm attempting to seduce you. You can fend me off and at the right moment I stop. If you like we can bring one of the women teachers here to make sure I stop."
"We can't. There wasn't anyone else around."
Ever feel that you're swimming against the tide? You keep trying and you get nowhere.
"Have it your way," I said. "We'll ignore the problem for now. Maybe your dreams will change to show you studying hard and getting good marks and we can forget about what is probably a false vision."
"It's not a false vision."
"How do you know? It hasn't come true and I have no intention of raping you, I can assure you. Has it occurred to you that it's just your hormones speaking? You might be finding me wildly attractive and your dreams are just a way of dealing with it."
"Oh, please. You're old enough to be my father."
"Thank you. I hadn't realised that I'd been such a precocious child, fathering children before I was even a teenager. Shocking behaviour on my part."
"Sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't mean to be rude. You're not all that old, I guess."
"Didn't mean to be rude. You just have a natural talent for it, I guess," I mimicked. "Shall we move on from your putative rape and deal with your extra assignment? I still don't want you to fail art, either before or after I rape you. Now there's an idea. I'll promise not to rape you until after you've graduated."
Helen opened her mouth to say something but I jumped in first.
"No. Don't tell me it has to be before you graduate. Why don't you write an essay specifying all the criteria I need to consider if I intend to rape you? I can read it and, if you care to specify an approximate date, I'll arrange to be in Africa at that time. Now, your assignment!"
I turned and headed to the storeroom again, catching a look of fury as I turned that I'm quite sure was an inappropriate way for a young lady to regard a respected schoolmaster. Being that respected schoolmaster I knew enough to not notice.
Helen came stalking after me, her entire body radiating offence that I was taking her vision so lightly. I'd laid out on the table in the storeroom a rough draft of what I wanted her to do. The assignment was well within her capabilities but she'd have put in some honest effort.
I beckoned her over to look at the draft. I was confident that I wouldn't need to explain it to her. Where art was concerned she was red hot. She took one look at the draft and spun away from the table, gasping.
"Oh my god. That's what I was looking at when you jumped me. It's now. You're going to do it now. Oh my god."
