An Englishman in New England

The Samsonite Saga (as it shall henceforth be known) started my mind free-associating this morning while I was on the can. It went frolicking this way and that in the cosmos of my mental universe, careening into the time I shit my pants on a school field trip, rebounding off my first kiss, orbiting my cluster of college crushes, and finally coming to rest on my first year of primary school.

I don't remember much of the first day, but many of the details stick out like splinters in the carpet - tiny, sharp, and just waiting to cause injury.

I was 7 years old when I entered the class of "Prep 1" - the first year of preparatory school. As you may be beginning to realize, 7 was, to use a royalism, my own personal annus horribilis (latin for "fucking awful time I wish I could amputate from my life").

The biggest detail in this episode was my teacher, whose name was Miss Gimson. I'll save all you ancestry buffs out there the trouble of studying the roots of this name by telling you now: it means 400lbs of bitter, ugly, scottish hating of me.

Janet (for that was her given name) and I didn't click like she pretended she and the other kids did. This was made very clear when I made a mistake, which was often. I would do something wrong, because I was scared of her and couldn't think straight, she would empty those gigantic lungs at me, I would wipe up the blood from my shattered eardrums, cry and feel stupid, rinse and repeat.

I think the thing that terrified me the most about her when she was yelling was that I kept imagining her rasping in that thick Edinburgh accent "yu knoh what thes meens dohn't yu?", and a giant roll of fat spilling out from under her shirt, enveloping and digesting my screaming body in front of a gazing class. I used to picture her releasing a satisfied burp and then turning to the class and saying "Now whu ayelse can teyell me whut the vairb es en thes sayntence?"

The thing that really burns me up is that I was so scared of her that I couldn't hate her - I was just a small boy who until that point had a pretty optimistic view of the world and quite a bit of faith in the goodness of people. Looking back on it, she knew this, and took an active enjoyment in humiliating me in front of my peers, grinding me into a pathetic ball of nerves who would burst into tears if you looked at me the wrong way.

One shining moment sticks out between myself and her, however. I was in a school play being held in the Dining Hall - as usual, she had taken it upon herself to direct this musical ordeal for parents and students alike. The room was crammed to capacity, and stuffy as an accountants' convention in July. Remember those gigantic lungs I mentioned? Turns out they needed a bit more oxygen than the rest of us to keep ol' Janet vertical.

I distinctly remember looking over at her standing there, flabby arms crossed over those ski slope breasts, beaming smug satisfaction at this torture she was inflicting on the wretched audience. I can remember the donkey-like braying that instantly wrenched attention away from the silenced performers and over to her as she lost consciousness, vomited on herself and fainted. I remember laughing out as loud as I could without being noticed as I watched a nearby father, ever the gentleman, try to catch her, realize the futility of attempting to stop the groundward progress of the fleshy behemoth, and let her hit the deck.

But I will best remember being one of the first people she locked eyes with when she came around and was sat up by a group of concerned, but unwilling-to-touch-puke helpers. It was momentary, but unmistakeable. She knew in that instant that I had seen her humiliated, small and weak. She continued to yell at me for the rest of my year with her, but I didn't cry anywhere near as much as I used to.