Texter (S1 : E1)

Texter Jordan was a teacher in a senior secondary school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He taught Grade 10, 11 and 12 English and History. He had been in his assigned position for a little over 5 years.

And now, he was, looking down at a 2-meter makeshift table in his garage. Long-draped sheets of black plastic hung from the open rafters of the enclosure. Plastic garbage bags covered the floor beneath his feet. Plastic sheets lined the inner walls of the garage. In his right hand was a gun – a rotary tattoo gun. And, it was fully loaded, and he was ready to use it. His hands were protected by black skin-tight rubber gloves. Over his head and face he wore a soft rubber, life-like Justin Trudeau Halloween mask. His frame was covered in a space-age body suit. The suit was composed of a hybrid fabric made from 75% lycra and 25% thinsulate.

He never dreamed he would be standing over the out-stretched, supinated body of a parent of one of his students. This particular parent had repeatedly called Texter to task, for failing her son in Grade 11 English - even though her son had not done homework since Grade 3, and refused to take part in class discussions or group project work. Furthermore, he was a constant and major disruption in class. Mr. Jordan had made many phone calls home to the student’s mother to alert her of the problems. Each time a phone call was made to discuss reasonable solutions and interventions for her son's inevitable demise, the mother accused Texter of being a RACIST or a BULLY or a PERVERT. When report cards were handed out at the end of the term, the mother responded to her son’s failing grades by blaming his teacher, Texter Jordan, for not informing her ahead of time, of her son’s low marks. She made threatening phone calls to Texter’s home. She sent letters to the principal and to the superintendent at the Central Office, in efforts to have Texter fired. One day, he finally reached the end of his patience with both the student and his mother. But, since the student was younger, Jordan felt that there may be a better chance of saving him than his mother and so, he concocted a plan.

He had the secretary of the school arrange a ‘meeting’ between the mother and ‘an official’ (to be named later) from the school board. The bogus parent meeting was to be held in one of the conference rooms behind the locker rooms in the gymnasium. On the night of the ‘event’, Mr. Jordan parked his van at the back entrance to the gym and went inside to prepare the room for the meeting. Once ready, he left the door open and he waited. Finally, a knock came to the door. Jordan was hiding, out of sight of the ‘mother from hell’ as she entered the room. As she strode past him, he used a hand-held taser to stun the parent into a state of semi-consciousness. She fell to the floor. Quickly, Texter dragged her to the back door of the gym and then outside to the rear hatch of his van. He lifted her inside and blindfolded her with a black canvas bag. He tied her hands and feet to restrain her. On arriving at his garage in the back alley of his two-storey home on the south side of the city, the mother had clearly regained consciousness. Texter gave her another zap with the taser gun and knocked her out again. He dragged her into the garage and hefted her up onto the table. He removed all of her clothing and then strapped her arms, legs, mid-section and neck to the table. He waited over her until she awakened. When she woke up, he looked down into her panick-stricken eyes and he began to speak.

“Repeat after me, Ms. Zunter . . . I am a bitch. C’mon Ms. Zunter. Say it, so we can get started and I can get you back home to your loving little son and you can all sit down and do some homework together.”

“Hurry up, say it . . . I am a bitch . . . I am a bitch . . .”

Finally, the mother spoke in a somewhat terrified voice, “Alright, I’ll say it . . . I am a bitch. Now let me go.”

After she was finished speaking, he stuffed an old sock in her mouth and continued with some rules of the game, “Well not quite yet, Zunterella. I’ve got a little work to do so you can remember, forever and always that you are indeed, a bitch and, what a piss-poor job you have been doing as a parent up to this point in your son’s life.”

And, with that, Texter lowered the tattoo gun to the flat surface over her breast bone and began writing the words – I AM A BITCH. He even wrote them backward, so that she would be able to see them clearly, and in their proper orientation whenever she looked in the mirror.

He stopped momentarily and spoke again, “Maybe I should have asked you, what color you wanted for this FIRST of many tattoos, you will be receiving this evening. I just assumed that you would want BLACK – you know, the same color as your heart.”

Once Texter finished the ‘BITCH’ tattoo, he let Ms. Zunter know that he would be adding several other tattoos that she would be able to use in the future to help her son with his homework in a plethora of different content areas. She would be simply able to roll up a sleeve or a pant-leg or unbutton a blouse, and there would be the icebreaker message to get the study session started.

Up and down on her right arm and shoulder he wrote some poetry by Keats and Tennyson. He drew a colorful rendition of the Periodic Table on her tummy and Newton’s Laws of Motion on her large fleshy left thigh. On her lower right leg and calf, Texter included the biological classifications for several common plants and animals. A map of America, with all 50 states and capitals adorned her right thigh as the sky began to lighten outside. When all was said and done, Ms. Zunter was in possession of some of the best art-work in Winnipeg. Texter gave her another good touch-up with the taser wand, put her clothes back on and, dragged her to his van. He dropped her at her car back at the school, and left her outside the open driver’s side door.

Naturally, in the days that followed, there were the usual complaints made by Ms. Zunter, and her son, but because everyone from the police force to the school board to the mayor had heard them before, they were not taken very seriously. In fact, they were short-lived and considered unsubstantiated by all. Mr. Jordan went on with his English classes the next morning and for all the mornings after that. He received very little trouble from Zunter the Younger and, even less grief from Zunter’s mother in the remaining months of the school year. Things have a funny way of working out I guess.