"You look surprised!
You shouldn't be.
The world is full of creeps like me."
--Lyle Lovett, "Creeps Like Me"
I think I'm pretty tough, pretty realistic about what depravities people are capable of. I survived the OJ verdict, for instance. I watched Watergate on TV. I know there are creeps--and worse--out there, I've met a few, and they're at all levels, so I can watch the news or read the gory parts of Paris MATCH without losing my lunch.
But we have a case out here right now that has me so steamed, all I can do is splutter. Seems a 44-year-old guy picked up a couple of girls, 15 and 16, at the bus stop by the mall, by giving them the "I can get you into showbiz" line. Told them he was from MTV's "Jackass" program--excellent choice!--and would pay them $50 to do--well, here, you can read about it if you want to.
Fortunately for the girls, he stopped on the way to the motel, to get batteries for his camcorder. One of the girls got her head on straight, and called a friend--the hero of this story--who drove right over and blocked the creep's car so he couldn't get out, then called the police who came and arrested the creep.
All bad enough, of course, but the creep is--no, WAS--a teacher at a ritsy K-8 private school not a mile from where he picked up the girls.
A teacher.
The week after he was arrested, a local news station ran a "series" called "Who [sic] Can You Trust?" #1 on their inventory of possibly untrustworthy public servants were "Your Children's Teachers," followed closely by cops and I forget who else. Thanks to creeps like this guy, a crying child on a playground cannot be hugged by a teacher--of either sex. Any time we're working alone in our classrooms, we have to leave the doors open. And I was fired from a similar school for, among other gross offenses, taking a troubled student to lunch at his parents' request.
I despair. That's all I'm able to say about this. I just completely despair.
The varieties of human experience are unimaginable. As I'm fond of saying, "You never know what's going on in peoples' heads." If you just assume that you can't imagine it, you'll be closer to the truth than projecting (assuming that others are pretty much like you). They're not. "We are way more different on the inside than we appear on the outside." Something else I'm fond of saying. Anyway, this realistic slice of life that you've shared is quite disappointing, a diminished thing, a loss. And I'm sorry for it.
Posted by: Denny | May 04, 2004 at 08:50 AM