I heard the bulletin at work. There was a riot at the Ralph Kramden Elementary School in Los Angeles. That was my son’s school. I left work to hurry down and find him. When I got there hundreds of teachers were marching around the school chanting, “That wasn’t a tweet! That was a twat! That wasn’t a tweet! That was a twat!”
I saw my son’s teacher in the throng of complainers and ran up beside her. “Have you seen my son?” I shouted.
“Who?”
“My son. Do you know where he is?”
“We’re tired of being twatted at by these new Trump Centurions. They’re not going to get away with this kind of shit anymore. We’re going to see to that. We won’t stand for anymore twatting. We’ve had enough!” She’d ignored my question.
I knew I was around people who were far more educated than I, but I’d never heard twat used as a verb before. Feeling I might have misinterpeted the whole thing altogether, I asked her, “What’s a twat?”
She gave me a sour look, “Are you saying you haven’t seen her twat?”
“Whose twat?” I felt foolish even asking but her question caught me by surprise. I was confused.
“The one that belongs to that witch Betsy DeVos. She’s Trump’s new Secretary of Education. The one who’s trying to bring choice back into education. We’re the teachers, we make the choices. Not the parents! Not them, not anyone but us! This is all about her twat. Here look at it.”
I hesitantly took the piece of paper from her. I would think as a general rule Mr. Trump wouldn’t want his female cabinet members circulating pictures of that kind. Or maybe he would. It’s hard to tell what anyone really thinks anymore with all the conflicting stories going around. But I was relieved to see:
Betsy DeVos @BetsyDeVos
Day 1 on the job is done, but we’re only getting started. Now where do I find the pencils? 🙂
“Oh, a tweet.” Good. I had misunderstood.
“No, it’s a twat. A twat is a nasty tweet aimed at humiliating someone else. She just wants to make sure we all know she’s better than we are. Richer and better.”
Well, if that was the case, then we sure have more than our fair share of twats out there. I wasn’t a tweeter and I wanted to assure her I couldn’t possibly be a twatter. I read the tweet/twat and it didn’t seem so bad to me. It was kind of funny. But, my son’s teacher looked far too enraged to question or contradict. I just wanted to find my boy so I let it drop. “Where are all the kids?”
“Who?”
“The children. Are they safe?”
“This is so thrilling. Everyone is coming together for this. We’ll show ‘em. I heard even Students Against New Ideas are here. You know they recently joined forces with Students Against Anything Different. Isn’t that great? We need camaraderie and solidarity if we are ever going to get rid of those people.”
“Which people? The parents?” I looked around and besides the protesters we were the only ones here. I did wonder why the police weren’t here yet.
“No, Trump and all of his change mongers. Everything was fine until he showed up. And she’s been twatting at us ever since she got her Senate approval.”
This certainly wasn’t the time to argue but I was tempted to ask her about the falling test scores and the large, top-heavy bureaucracies sucking up the money meant for the kids. And I didn’t dare bring up the public pension debt that was threatening to topple many of the states or the rampant corruption endemic in public unions. Now wasn’t the time.
But, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance anyway. She yelled, “Look they’re here!” I turned and saw people in masks start to converge on the small school. If a school could look frightened then this one was scared to death. “Yeeeehaaaaw! Let’s go Black Bloc!”
I’d heard of those guys before. They crack noggins and torch stuff just for the hell of it. And it looked like that’s what they were going to do right now. The teachers followed them onto the small campus. “Hey, isn’t this where you work? Why burn it down? What about the kids?” I shouted after her. She didn’t even look back.
As the classrooms began to burn I saw an old man rush out to meet the arsonists. I recognized him as part of the school’s janitorial staff. He was yelling, “Hey you assholes, my lunch is in there.” He got his nut cracked for his trouble when the masked avengers swarmed all over him.
When everyone ran off I noticed the kids. At least they had used good sense and ushered themselves way off across the street. I saw my son and raced over. Taking him by the hand I got him back to the car in a hurry. The school was now completely engulfed. I wondered what happened to that poor janitor. Standing near my car was another parent, a mother with her arm around her child.
“When I drove up I thought it was a Walk-A-Thon,” she said. “They have a lot of them at this school. They raise bribe money for the legislators. It’s cute, watching the kids doing their bit for a better educational system. But this doesn’t look like a fundraiser to me.”
“No, it’s all about some lady’s twat.”
By the look on the woman’s face I realized my answer needed a better explanation. But before I could clarify it I saw the Black Bloc ruffians coming right at us. With the janitor long gone and apparently not wanting to beat each other up, that left only us parents.
We all hopped in our cars and raced off as fast as we could. “What about my school?” my son asked.
“Well, I guess the teachers feel other things are more important.”
What else could I say?