Our parking lot would be blocked off for the school to use for recess. The portion the upper grades used for football had a small chip or hole in the concrete. Any time someone found it while running and lost their balance, MM would make us give up our Nerf football because we were being "too rough" in causing a classmate to fall -- even if the person tripped on the hole of their own inattention without anyone touching him or her. One particular recess, MM took away our ball and then yelled at us for standing around and doing nothing. After we chose to play football with a snowball, she yelled at us again for that. wow
My 8th grade year, our parish priest came to our class to tell us that someone apparently found MM's home address, went to her house on Devil's Night, and flung bologna all over it and her family's property. He further said that if nobody came forward, he'd eventually start questioning us students one on one. When he commented that MM's family deserved to be treated fairly, my teen self had to bite his lip and not react in disgust. MM was far from fair on the playground - not that it justified a lame Devil's Night prank - so that comment struck a nerve, and I found myself
wanting to be questioned just to tell Father that she would treat her kids and their classmates differently than the rest of us (and that was probably why someone chose to prank her family like that).
As an example of her double-standards, I was sent to school without a jacket one Spring day because it was 50-60 outside (10-15 Celsius). MM made me stand up against a wall during recess for not having a jacket, but she didn't discipline a student who was a classmate of her oldest kid despite that kid not wearing a jacket either. In short, she was the type who'd look for any reason, no matter how trifling, to yell at or punish someone during recess unless it was someone in one of her kid's classes - then, she'd turn a blind eye and do nothing.
Anyways, it turned out some 7th grader and his high school-aged brother were named as the alleged culprits behind the bologna incident. So, nobody in my class was questioned as far as I know. After the incident, my best friend at the time typed up a complaint about MM on behalf of our class with examples of some of the other things she said or did that our class took issue with. We did our best to make sure it had an appropriate tone, but our teacher threw it away upon reading because she didn't think it was appropriate for us to write it. This shocked us; our 8th grade teacher was rather cool and most of us liked and respected her a great deal. To have legitimate concerns dismissed like that demoralized us. Of course it didn't stop us from making fun of MM behind her back when nobody could see or hear it.
