As many Swampscott Middle School students would know, Ms. Urban, the teacher, was a little bit crazy. For many years there had been this rumor that she blew up her cat in the microwave.
There are so many things that happened in that class. I remember in 6th grade there was this quarter eaten birthday cake that just sat in the middle of the room (on her desk, which was situated in between the circle of desks we sat in). It made the room have this smell, kind of sweet, but you knew that the cake was all moldy and everything, anyway.
On one occasion, she left the room for a second and the kid next to me, Chris Bur, made a meowing noise, which quickly got her back in the room. She came back in, looking like she was about to cry, and started scolding Chris for encouraging a rumor that was not true.
Mrs. Urban talked in this voice to mock us, sometimes, when we wrote a sentence wrong. It really only made her look stupid, and we just laughed at her when she did it.
And the computers she had in her room! They were these ancient Apple Macintosh ones, with black and white screens. When we (Mark Cus and I) had to use them, I remember he would go into other students' essays and mess with them. I remember something about him writing "Fatass" in place of Jared Rich's paper, once.
The essays I wrote were really shitty, too. We had to do compare and contrast essays, and I compared a Gameboy to a Gameboy color...once again, shut it. On my expository essay, I wrote all about Ben and how I met him.
She had these starving plants on her window sills (which never got any light except for the morning) and for some reason she trusted us to feed them. She'd give us these clear ketchup bottles filled with water to squirt in the plants. The other kids usually drowned the plants or squirted water on the computers and her personal belongings when she wasn't looking.
I think the worst part is that I remember taking part in this. I just took the bottle, aimed it behind me, towards the cabinets and squeezed. I really don't remember what I hit with the water. I do remember this red purse she had in a cardboard box, though.
This is one of the times that I'm most ashamed of during my life.