Erika Bonham dot com

February 1, 2003

Last night, i began reminiscing about High School, for some reason, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories of two of my teachers.

Ms. Ida Bruce. 9th grade Honors English. Ms. Bruce, or Ida, if you will, was straight off the boat from Scotland. Now, I typically think Scottish people rule, but Ida was quite the exception. She was an odd duck. And, maybe in Scotland she was a totally awesome teacher, but at Vista High School, we all thought otherwise. It was her first year there. And her last, I believe. My brother in later years ran into her at Submarina, where he was a sandwich artist, and informed me that she was working as a travel agent at that time. At the beginning of the year, we were slightly entertained by her. We would giggle when she discovered someone was chewing gum and would demand they "Bin it" in her very authorative Scottish brogue. She called erasers rubbers. She would wear the same outfit two days in a row, even saving her outfit from Friday for Monday morning. Our initial entertainment soon turned into irritation, as we discovered she really had no control of the classroom, and had no grasp of how to teach English. Everything she did was frustrating and annoying. We did our best to make her life a living hell and drove her crazy. Half way through the year, she changed her look by dying her hair pink. I think she thought it was kind of red, but it was pink. And she got turqouise contacts. Very sexy. So, we destroyed her. I don't know if it was her choice to leave the school after the year was over or if she was asked to leave, but we were certainly glad to see her go. I feel a little bad about how impatient and harsh we were, but you have to understand that she seriously was a sucky teacher. She really was.

Señora Alberro. We were required to take two years of a foreign language to graduate, and being the practical person I am, I chose Spanish. We were an hour from Mexico. I thought I could make use of my education. I was placed in Ms. Alberro's class for Spanish II. The lady was from Argentina. I cannot actually say whether she spoke English or not. She had actually been a teacher at Vista High for a few years. She made us copy the Spanish book. Like, that was our assignment. Copy these pages and you will magically learn Spanish. There were all these native Spanish speakers in my class and she loved them. They got to grade the copied page assignments and were exempt from doing them. I couldn't stand her. I thought she was incompetent and I wasn't learning anything. I said something about it and tried to get out of her class. It turned out I had to wait until the end of first semester, then I could transfer to Señora Johnson's class. When Ms. Alberro got wind of my dissatisfaction (and probably got grief from Administration), she started hassling me. I was the only person that got a B in that class. I seriously think it was because she didn't like me. A few years later, my cousin got this frog, an Argentinan Horned Frog (also known as a Pac Man frog), which was the spitting image of her. Seriously.

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