Challenging Authority

“Hey big boss! The head teacher just summoned you to her office!” Alex told me as I was doing my math exercises at my desk.
“Yeah, I know…”
“Are you gonna be alright?”
“Don’t worry! I’ll be fine,” replied I assuredly.

As our beloved English teacher, head teacher, was replaced by the new Chinese teacher, which stirred severe turbulence in our tranquil school, I decided to put up a defense wall to observe this new comer.

Being a class leader for two years, I have gained a lot of support from my fellow students. For some reason, I just couldn’t stand this new head teacher no matter how well she taught in Chinese class. In fact, I don’t think she is a great instructor.

“What is going on with this class?” The new head teacher asked.
“What do you mean by that?”
“No one really listens to my lecture no matter how hard I try,” she said angrily.
“I can’t force everyone to listen to your lesson,” said I coldly.
“But you are the class leader!”
“That’s not the issue,” answered I nonchalantly.
“Okay, I guess I will have to take some extreme action to resolve this problem…”

A few days later, we received a huge load of homework in Mandarin, requesting us to memorize five archaic essays for a test. Everyone complained and murmured throughout the week.

“Big boss, what can we do? There is no way we can memorize those essays by heart in three days. There are at least 4,000 characters!” The whole class told me.
“I know, I’ve told the new teacher but she wouldn’t listen to me!”

What kind of teacher was that? I questioned myself hundreds of times. Why did we need to tolerate lousy teachers like that? I know teacher has been a dignified profession in our Chinese society for thousands of years. People respect teachers highly. Parents even allowed teachers to give their children corporal punishments in the past. Of course, nowadays, doing so will only jeopardize a teacher’s career and lead him or her to law suits…

“What the heck do you think you’re doing? How dare you hand in a blank exam sheet?” The Chinese teacher said.
I looked away and said nothing.
“Did you hear what I said? Or are you suddenly deaf now? Answer me!” she slapped hardly across my right face.
I turned my face back and looked right in her eyes as I shouted, “How could you slap me? My parents don’t even do that to me! You filthy, evil and ugly slut! I will make you pay for what you did to me and the whole class!”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes, I am. So what? You’re dead meat!”

Although I was only fourteen, I had read quite a lot and in many ways was a lot more mature than my peers. I happened to know a good buddy whose father worked in the county bureau as a high ranking official. I quickly plotted a revenge scheme and phoned my buddy’s father…

…To be continued.