Substitute Teacher

a short story

Image by Caitlin Walsh

She was an amazon.

Six foot tall, well muscled but not bulging, small breasted but clearly not flat chested. Rayna wore straight cut blue jeans, 100% cotton, well fitting but not skin tight. The sleeves of her pullover work shirt went to her elbows, sturdy full cotton as well, an opaque dull red. On her feet were light brown, lace-up ankle boots. Her brown hair, pulled back in a pony tail, barely showed beneath what looked like an actual cowboy hat, pale straw, with a turquoise colored braided string hat band.

She looked like she must have taken a wrong turn to end up in this classroom. She should be off leading a hike or riding the lead horse in front of a bunch of kids at a dude ranch.

She was looking at a piece of paper in her hand, frowning. There were crease-lines in her bare, well-tanned face that went beyond the frown. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t old either. She was that indeterminate age in between, somewhere between an old 25 or a young 50.

MeToo training. There was a list of things the boys weren’t supposed to do, and some exercises on taking no for an answer. She frowned.

There were 23 fifteen and sixteen year olds in the room. Most of the boys were slouching in the back rows with a couple of girls. A couple of girls and a boy, all with unnatural hair colors, sat in the front row. The rest of the girls and boys sat in clumps in between. There was a susurus in the room, a very quiet background noise. But that wouldn’t last long if she didn’t say or do something.

She looked at the paper again. And the stack of handouts. Then she dumped all of it in the wastebasket next to her desk, muttering “bullshit.”

Suddenly, all the background noise was gone. She had the full attention of the whole class.

“So,” she said, “which of you boys in this class is the strongest?”

One of the boys slouching in the back lifted his hand and called out, “Me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hondo,” he answered. There were snickers from the back of the room. Not his real name then. No matter.

“Come up here,” the teacher said. “We’re going to arm-wrestle.”

As he came up to the front of the room, she said, “Who thinks I can beat him? Raise your hands.”

Most of the hands stayed down, but a few went up. All of them girls.

The teacher showed a ghost of a smile and shook her head.

Then she set up with the boy. “One, two, three… GO!”

For a moment, she was able to hold her own, then he slowly pushed her arm down.

The girls who had raised their hands looked shocked. One of them said, “You weren’t trying!”

The teacher got up. “On the contrary, Hondo here was going easy on me. So your first lesson is that the strongest teenage boy in the room who has gone through puberty has greater upper body strength than I do, and I’m stronger than all of you girls. The only area where a girl and a boy past puberty are even approximately evenly matched is leg strength. And most young men are still stronger than most young women, even there.”

“So,” she said. “What are the implications of that?”

“We can’t fight them,” said one of the girls in the back, with the boys.

Then Hondo said, “Not exactly,” he said. “It means you can’t win in a direct close-in physical fight. Unless you have a weapon. Or you don’t fight fair.”

“Very good,” said the teacher. “Both of you. The boys here know that strength matters. There are ways to get around that, but the guys who aren’t as strong know they’re at a disadvantage. Girls, listen! Most of these guys will hold back when you try to fight them. And by the way, normally that is very good. That is exactly what you guys should be doing.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” said another girl. “Let them rape us?”

“Well, duh,” said another boy. “Just say no.”

“Yeah,” she came back, “and what if you don’t listen?”

“Well, you gotta say it like you mean it,” he argued. “You can’t go ‘oh, stop it!’” and his impersonation of a giggling girl was so good the whole room laughed.

“Hondo, come up here, please,” said the teacher. Then she turned to the boy who’d made everyone laugh. “You, too.”

Then she said to the stronger boy, “Take his watch.”

Hondo hesitated.

“You can’t tell him to do that,” objected the other boy.

“Tell him not to take it,” said the teacher.

“Come on, man,” whined the boy, “don’t take my watch. Don’t listen to her.”

Hondo looked at the teacher, who nodded her head. He grabbed the other boy’s forearm in an iron grip, and pulled the watch off his wrist.

“I guess you didn’t sound like you meant it,” said the teacher.

“You told him to!” he objected.

“And I told you to tell him not to,” she said. “You didn’t sound very firm. Or look ready to fight.”

“Well, look at him! He’s the captain of the football team….”

Hondo handed the watch back to him. “Yeah, Cal,” he said. “I think that was her point.” Then he turned to the teacher. “My name’s Lijah. What did you mean by normally we should hold back with the girls? My folks told me never to fight below my level. Especially with girls.”

“Unfortunately,” said the teacher, “a lot of girls have been taught that they are actually, or potentially, equal matches for you guys. And part of that is because you do hold back. When you did that with me, several of the girls here not only didn’t recognize that, they thought I was holding back.”

“But there’s martial arts,” said one of the girls. “None of us here are trained in that, but if we were….”

“You’d get the element of surprise,” said Lijah. “You could break free and run. That would be your best bet. But you’d still be toast, unless you killed or maimed me, or seriously hurt me, once I got close in and knew what you were up to.”

“But you don’t know, like, karate or MMA,” she said.

“I know how to fight,” he said. “And I’m big, and strong. Another guy, close enough to my strength, with martial arts, or even any formal fighting training, could take me down. But most guys know how to size things up. Even the martial arts guys wouldn’t come close in if they could avoid it. Stun and then escape or kill. That’s what you do. I mean, if it’s real, life or death. Not if it’s just a contest, of course.”

“So, girls,” said the teacher. “Are you prepared to maim or kill in a close-in fight? Do you know how? Can you handle a weapon?”

Most of the girls looked horrified. But the girl with the pink hair, sitting in the front row, stood up. “I can,” she said. “Handle a weapon. And I’ve got a concealed carry permit.”

The blue-haired girl sitting next to her turned to her in shock, “Molly! I can’t believe you’d….”

“He’s right,” she said, nodding to Lijah. “And even if martial arts worked, why do I only get to defend myself if I have the time and health and money to spend on all that? Guns work for everyone.”

“Well said,” said the teacher.

“But guns are dangerous!” said the blue-haired girl.

“And we’re dangerous,” said Lijah.

“So do you want your girlfriend to have a gun?” said another girl, smugly.

“Damn right I do,” he answered. “And she does. And we go to the range together. I can’t be with her 24/7.”

Putting some of my short fiction here.

Don’t know what my long term goals are. Guess I’ll find out.

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