Please Welcome... Kitten!

Hello Readers (or Bitches, as “Kev” likes to say)!! This is “Kev’s” friend, “Kitten”…wife of “Tiger” and mother to “Lil’ Kitty”…from sunny and hellishly warm Phoenix. One thing right off the bat…”we” tend to use a LOT of quotation marks around here, dontcha think??

Anyhoo…I am writing today, bursting with pride over yet another teacher being arrested for having a sexual relationship with one of her students. As “Kev” hinted at in a recent post, I am a teacher and I happen to work in the very district as the recent offender. In fact, she committed her offenses at my alma mater, Paradise Valley High School, here in Phoenix.

I’ve been a teacher for many, many years (let’s just say LOADS and leave it at that), and I have not once had a feeling other than motherly affection for any of my students. I have experienced the occasional “crush” from a boy in my class (okay, yes…in my much younger years), in which case I have spoken gently, yet plainly, that teachers are inaccessible objects of young people’s desires (we’ve all had a crush on a teacher, right?). We are put here on this earth to shepherd young ones into productive lives, to mold young minds (scary, huh?), but not violate them in any way. Most of my young friends have accepted this crushing blow and gone on to lead normal lives. (“Kitten” hopes you are reading the intense sarcasm here.)

As a teacher who has been very devoted to her profession, and defended it many times in the face of public criticism, I would like to invite all would-be child molesters to find another line of work. Perhaps driving one of those annoying ice cream trucks would be a good choice…at least parents know to be wary of those folks. Let’s leave the actual “teaching” of that particular subject to the students’ peers…their equally fumbling adolescent boy/girlfriends in the back seat of the parents’ car…the way God intended. The rest of us had to learn that way, and damn it, it’s good enough for today’s kids. Then the real teachers, who truly do have children’s best interests at heart, can go about our jobs, without having to be afraid of being left alone in a room with a child, of returning the hug of an eager little one, of befriending and counseling confused young adults…since now, because of people like this young teacher in Paradise Valley, we are “warned” yearly to be careful in our interactions with children, in case they be misconstrued by an onlooker. Sooo terribly sad.

Well, cyber friends…”Kitten” has to run…there are many, many exciting things to do here in the feline abode…laundry, homework, cleaning out the pantry, paying bills…the glamour astounds me. Have a happy day! And support your local public school teachers. Most of them are REALLY great.