Meat Hash

Fifth grade was a tough year for me, both socially and academically. Getting in trouble at school is a double blow that way. We lived in Park Rapids then, having moved into town a bit over a year before. Partly it was my own big mouth that did it, but partly it was also the way the teacher handled it, leaving me no recourse but the unexplained truth, which, being unexplained, simply wasn’t believed.

It started with my brother. In one of the rare conversations we had which wasn’t a fight back then, he asked me who I had for a teacher that year. I informed him it was Mrs. Tidrick. He laughed and repeated it back to me as Mrs. Tit Rack. This in turn both delighted and scandalized me, and I couldn’t wait to share this information back at school, anticipating similar results from my classmates. I waited until lunchtime in the cafeteria to announce conspiratorially, “Hey, do you know what my brother calls our teacher?” It turned out they were scandalized but, possibly from being well-socialized girls, not nearly as delighted as I thought they should be with the information. Oh, well, another attempt at being the center of attention down the drain. I gave it up and finished my lunch.

When class resumed after lunch, Mrs. Tidrick started off on a long speech, saying something had come to her attention which both disturbed and mystified her, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. It seems some anonymous student had called her a puzzling name over lunch and she wanted an explanation, right there in front of the whole class. Oh-oh, could I be in trouble? I started to relax when she announced that the name in question was “Meat Hash”.

Oh, whew! It wasn’t me, then. Somebody else was in trouble. She kept going on and on about it, and we were all looking around the class, wondering who it could be she was talking about. But I started noticing that more and more eyes were turning in my direction, sitting way back in the corner of the room. That included Mrs. Tidrick’s eyes, as she began to stare more and more directly at me. Finally calling me by name, she directly asked me what I had meant by calling her “Meat Hash”?

I couldn't tell her what it meant because I had never said that and hadn’t a clue what it meant, much less how someone had transformed “tit rack” into “meat hash”. And I couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, right there in front of the whole class, correct her misinformation. All I could say was that I had never called her “meat hash”. It was the plain truth. It just wasn’t the complete truth. With an anonymous witness to the contrary, the truth simply wasn’t believed.

Convinced I added dishonesty to my list of crimes, I first got to sit facing the corner of the room for a while. When that didn’t elicit any more information from me, I got sent to the office. Again, all I could do was protest that I had never said it. Their level of belief matched my teacher’s, and I got to sit out in the hall by myself for a while, the ultimate sign of disgrace to anyone passing by.

As weeks and months passed, on the playground and lining up for the bus, fellow students would taunt me with “meat hash”. Sometimes I defended myself, and sometimes I tried my best to ignore them, hoping they’d eventually get tired of it and find somebody else to pick on or something better to do. I was a pariah, not one friend in the whole school.

Part of what kept me going was the righteous indignation of knowing I was unjustly accused. Paradoxically, the knowledge of my real crime and of how much more trouble I would be in if it came out, kept my mouth glued shut against those who taunted me. I was fair enough to think sometimes it was the right punishment for the wrong reason.

A couple months after this started my mother took me aside and asked me why I seemed to be so miserable. Was something going on at school that she needed to know about? She thought perhaps it was something about the brand new elementary school which had opened up that year just a couple of blocks from out house which was causing my unhappiness. No way was I about to escalate this issue to a whole new level. I’d be in so much trouble both from my parents and from my brother if his part in it came to their attention. They were the good old fashioned sort who would punish both of us for what had happened, and he’d find a way to get back at his pesky kid sister. “Tit” just wasn’t proper language except on the farm in the proper context, and even then it might be questionable. If you needed to say it, you’d better pronounce it like it was spelled, t-e-a-t, long “e”, so everybody knew how you meant it. We certainly had no excuse. Not only would they back the teacher in this one, as always, but it would only get worse, with punishment at home too. So I finally did lie, and told my mother that she must be mistaken, that nothing was going on at school.

Eventually it all did die down. I presume everyone involved forgot all about it. Except me.

It comes back sometimes, in the dark of night, stirring up the hurt and anger all over again The adult in me wants to rewrite the event, wishing that Mrs. Tidrick had chosen to take me aside privately and ask me what I had been talking about. Then maybe, just maybe, I could have told her and taken my proper punishment.

But the angry child that remains, now with adult communication skills, wants to confront her in class, throwing in her face her bad decision to make the whole thing public, but lay that choice on her, and then inform everybody that their teacher was “Mrs. Tit Rack!”