We’re Mad Miss Martha

But Miss Martha we’re mad! we’re mad all the time and anyhow, we’re nice to you!”

“Kayla, you girls ran your teacher out of the school, off of the job.”

“But we’re nice to you!  We’re always nice to you!”

“That’s because you have to be.  I’m a volunteer.  I can’t come to the school without a teacher here and you just, you just ran her out of town!”

“But we’re mad!”

I don’t blame them.  They’re nine and ten years old and they’re all having their periods and their after school teacher this year, well she really thought a whale was a fish, but still… 

This year’s group of girls have been unmanageable.  I asked the principal, Ms. Zoe, “Is it my imagination?  Or are the girls just AWFUL this year.  I don’t even know what to say.  They’re AWFUL!”  

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she says, “I just want to put them all on a vegetarian diet and make sure they get lots and lots of exercise.  I really don’t know what to do.”

Ms. Zoe is tough and compassionate.  I had been volunteering at this school in East Oakland for six years by then and the nine and ten year old girls were just my favorites.  I LOVE that age.  Each year more and more of the girls in this age group were having their periods, were in adolescence.  Nine and ten year old girls.  This year, I think all but two were in adolescence and they were tough.  I could not get them to sit still and focus.  They had become unruly, even for the seasoned educators.  I would sometimes drum with the girls at the beginning of their after school program to get them all focused and settled.  The drumming periods were lasting longer and longer and they weren’t getting settled.  Not to mention that the drumming kindof scared the 22, 23 year old student teachers.

Something that nobody talks about, is that once a girl’s chemistry changes, the way the world views her changes.  So, she’ll be looking at greeting cards in a drugstore and look up and realize that a grown man is staring at her.  That man, that man, might not even realize he is doing it.  We are animals, pheromones are in the air and you are no longer a child in the animal world.

Most of us, men and women, don’t pay close attention to this.  Once, when I was tripping may way to menopause I was just about ready to cycle into one of my final cycles.  I was at the Y early one morning.  There I was, in my one piece bathing suit, my fins, the socks I wear with my fins to keep from getting blisters, my goggles, and my swim cap.  Really, nothing to see here.  I was swimming laps and some guy,  the guy I was sharing a lane with was like waiting for me when I’d touch off to start a new lap.  He was an ok looking guy, age appropriate-ish.  A little younger than me, but whatever, and he was a regular swimmer.  So, I go to do a flip and he tries to get some small talk in “Nice flippers!” ,  “The water is warm this morning, isn’t it?”  that sort of thing.  At some point I might have stopped to let him yack.  I didn’t take my goggles off.  A couple of weeks later I pass him in the gym and I’m invisible.  I am at the pool and not even a nod.  It was all a chemical thing, nothing to do with anything.  That’s the sort of attention these little girls were getting at nine.  Nine and ten years old and getting that kind of attention.

So the girls were cranky.  I couldn’t blame them.  Oh!  and yes, these girls lived in a high crime area.  The school was regularly put on lockdown because of shooters in the street and the school, an elementary school, had guards who wore bullet proof vests.  The girls were a bit distracted.

Sure, there had always been a cranky few.  

“Ms. Martha, Maria is cranky today because she didn’t get enough sleep last night, there was gunfire.”  

“Maria, did you want to go rest in the nap area?” I ask.

“Yes,” she responds.

But this year, they were all cranky.  And mad.

I’m sitting in my office as I type this.  An interoffice memo just came in encouraging us to all “stand for equality”.  This from the management team that campaigned for the President who promotes inequality.  I digress.  I’m emotionally exhausted.  I have a Masters Degree in Cyber Security Operations and tonight I’m working on a new prototype for my plague pin.

• A copper shaft because copper’s anti microbial
• A purple crown – purple is healing
• A heart because it’s our strongest organ
• A diamond pave arrow – strongest gem pointing in the “right” direction

Fraught with symbolism is my pin.

It feels like an exercise for a nine year old girl, not a middle aged professional woman.  But I’m mad and I’m sad and I have written lots of letters, made lots of calls, attended lots of protests and I don’t know what to do anymore.

Please message me directly if you would like a pin. Any and all donations will be forwarded to Girls, Inc. of Alameda County.