He is lost to me in some foggy distance.  It's almost ten years since I met him.  I was wearing black pants and heels.  I'd lost 24 pounds on Weight Watchers and, so, I had a black and white knit shirt tucked neatly into those black pants.  New short hair cut. Nice stride. 

But...

My stomach was in turmoil.  You'd never have known it though as I had a smile planted on my face.  Smile!  Smile! Smile!  I'd been let go at my former school.  With only four years of seniority and the placement of that school's principal at another school, I was the first to go.  That principal had "bought" me.  Oh!  I love these terms!  He bought me.  He went to his budget conference for that school and said something like this:  "I gotta have her and so, from my discretionary budget, I will spend $50,000 for her salary."

Then he was transferred.

Within six weeks of his departure--and following the arrival of a nut case at my school--I was out.  Oh, dear readers, I must write of that histrionic crazy man.  He'd called me into his principal's office and said, " I can't keep you.  You could be placed somewhere else within twenty four hours."  

And so I started boxing up the things in my office.  Bare walls and shelves.  

He scurried by that office.  Returned. He saw the bare walls.  "GET THOSE PICTURES BACK UP!  I WILL NOT HAVE THESE KIDS RIOTING."  Later, when I was at the psychopath's school; later when, as a community activist, I organized a community wide bullying prevention event, he called me at that school.  Snide bastard!  Speaker phone idiocy!  THIS is what you are paid to do?!  Torment enthusiasm? Squelch it?  Stomp it DEAD?!  You fear filled creep! 

And me.  Silly, silly me thinking he'd called to thank me for my efforts.

As I write, I marvel. Marvel at the likes of these two men--and then a disengaged woman--in charge.  Of anything. It's frightening.  Frightening to watch them suck up to their superiors.  Scary to observe those superiors' departing backs and know that our principals' glued on "yes, ma'am/sir" grins would become their ear to ear glee as they turned to terrorize.

I make none of this up.  

Back to thin waisted , smiling, high heeled, 2008 me:  He, his assistant principal and his "bestie", the other counselor, were having a meeting. He leered when he saw me.  Immediately--do you believe me?--I immediately felt his predatory menace.  I didn't know it to be THAT then, but his "smile" and his satisfaction at an attractive woman joining his team made him later, when he heard me speak Spanish, say with relish, "I'll be able to use that."  

I was that "that".  A thing.  He'd won the booby prize! I'd not yet learned of the reasons I'd been place there.  Hadn't yet met the wonderful man I'd replaced.  I still don't know of this torment.  I never will.  He died.  Died right there in the bullying beast's office. I can only speculate.  Use my experience.  In essence--and I will never know why--the "bestie" didn't like him.  

She didn't like me much either.  

Her.  "We're like brother and sister." She said of our principal.  "We're two peas in a pod."  And so they were.  

Her.  What was it like to be her?  There?  She was the principal's right hand woman.  They sometimes rode to and from work together.  She and he in his car.  Her.  Her.  

I've not spent time on her.  I should.  She may have been the true bully.  He may have been her lackey.  An assistant principal once asked with a chortle just what her job actually was.  

I'd like to answer that for you, but I simply do not have the desire this morning. The sun is out here in Miami.  It's Sunday morning.  I've yet to visit my flower friends.  

And, ten years and twenty five gained pounds later, I'd better take an exercise walk.