Peanut Butter Toast

In the third grade, I had a terrifying teacher named Ms. Maddox. She was super tall, in her sixties, pixie cut red hair, with a turned-up nose that resembled a pig snout. She was by far one of the most intimidating women I have ever met. And that wasn’t just for me. The whole class feared her.

She was always so angry. We walked on eggshells with her. The first time she ever scared the bejeezes out of me was one of the first few days in that school year. Everyone was buzzing with excitement in their new school shoes but still shy getting acclimated to the new space. We were all informed that we needed to have our pencils sharpened before class started, so every morning, once we all made it to the classroom, we would get in line to use the pencil sharpener. And this was in 1999, so we were still using the hand crank sharpeners that were bolted to the wall. It took a minute to get three or four pencils ready for the day.

Setting the Scene:

The morning bell rings. Ms. Maddox breaks off from her conversation in the hallway with the other teachers and walks through the door. She sees the line of children still trying to get their pencils sharpened, slams the door to startle everyone, and immediately starts screaming like a mad woman. She was freaking pissed that we weren’t all back in our seats, ready to go the second that bell rang. This was the beginning of bootcamp. Just imagine a room full of third graders looking at each other like, “What the Fuck?” We were all scared out of our minds.

These outbursts became a regular thing. And you never knew what was going to set her off, but you just hoped to high heaven that it wasn’t you. There was a girl in the class that obviously had a rough home life. She was always in dirty clothes, her hair was matted, she smelled, and she was very quiet. One day, she was having trouble locating the workbook Ms. Maddox demanded we pull out to keep us busy. She eventually got the courage to walk over and tell Ms. Maddox she needed help. Immediately, the woman began to spiral, yelling at and demeaning this girl, because she was a fuckup. The poor girl stood there while Ms. Maddox went to her desk and started fishing around inside the storage cubby to find the workbook for her. Horror ensued as the woman became enraged. The girl’s desk was so disorganized that the things being stored inside had become so tightly mangled, they were stuck. Ms. Maddox picked up the desk and violently began banging the open side into the floor to dislodge the disarray.

This was such an episode that the teacher-friend across the hall came running in the room to see what was happening. She saw all of us staring wide-eyed at this travesty and immediately grabbed Ms. Maddox and took her out of the room. The poor girl was so traumatized, she looked as if she were about to turn to dust. A classroom filled with more than twenty kids, and none of us knew what to do. Playground chatter had confirmed that we had all told our parents about how crazy Ms. Maddox was. And most of the parents spoke with the school’s authority in effort to remedy the situation. As children, vulnerable and taught to respect authority, we all felt powerless and tortured. I am thirty-two years old, and I still remember these moments as if it were yesterday.

Nothing ever happened. At least not to our knowledge. Several of us begged and pleaded for a new teacher, but for some reason, Ms. Maddox stayed. The explosive yelling and manic episodes continued. We all just lived in fear for the entire school year. It was also insane to witness how different she was when another adult was present. If the principal stepped in or we were in parent-teacher conferences, she was angelic. At that age, I didn’t know what to make of it, but I was very scared.

I only learned a few things about her, and mostly from other kids who had mustered up the courage to ask her personal questions in front of the class. She had been married and divorced. She had a son. And she liked to eat peanut butter toast for breakfast. The last one stuck with me for some reason. As a third grader, my breakfast was typically a toaster strudel or bowl of oatmeal. Until that moment, I didn’t even know that peanut butter toast for breakfast was a thing. A few years later, once I was making my own breakfast, the memory sparked in my mind, and I decided to try peanut butter toast. Since then, it’s been a fairly regular go-to for me.

In my early twenties, deep in the addiction of constantly having the internet in my hand, I googled her. I found that she had made her way up into working for the school board. I had conflicting emotions. I was relieved that she was no longer in a classroom but appalled that she was still in the school system. Looking back, I have no doubt that Ms. Maddox was dealing with things far beyond the scope of my third-grade comprehension, but her actions impacted so many young minds in a traumatic way. I guarantee that the now adults that had her as a teacher at some point vividly remember her and not in a good way. I don’t know where Ms. Maddox is now or what her life has been like, but as I eat my peanut butter toast all these years later, I think of her destroying that poor young girl who couldn’t find her workbook. And that’s fucking sad. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the girl’s name. I really wish I did. I just hope like hell that she found good people and her life got a lot better.