WHY DID YOU LET HIM TOUCH YOU, VIOLET! THAT TERRIBLE MAN.

Why, when you would not let others touch you, who’d hoped to love you as a daughter?

“I AM THE CAPTAIN. YOU ARE THE CREW. IF YOU DON’T SHAPE UP, you go overboard.”

Mr. Sandman, ninth-grade math. His skin was flushed with perpetual indignation at our stupidity. His eyes leapt at us like small shiny toads. When he stretched his lips it was like meat grinning, we cringed and shuddered and yet we laughed, for Mr. Sandman was funny.

He was one of only three male teachers at Port Oriskany Middle School. He was adviser to the Chess Club and the Math Club. He led his homeroom class each morning in the Pledge of Allegiance.

(In a severe voice Mr. Sandman recited the pledge facing us as we stood obediently with our hands over our hearts, heads bowed. There was no joking now. You would have thought that the Pledge of Allegiance was a prayer. A shiny American flag, said to be a personal flag, a flag that Mr. Sandman had purchased himself, hung unfurled from the top, left-hand corner of the blackboard, and when Mr. Sandman finished the pledge in his loud righteous voice he lifted his right hand with a flourish, in a kind of salute, fingers pointing straight upward and at the flag.)

(Was this the Nazi salute?) (We were uncertain.)

Mr. Sandman ruled math classes like a sea captain. He liked to shake what he called his iron fist. If one of us, usually a boy, was hopelessly stupid that day he’d have to walk the plank—rise from his desk and walk to the rear of the room, stand there with his back to the class and wait for the bell.

On a day of rough waters there’d be three, could be four, boys at the rear of the room, resigned to standing until the bell rang, forbidden to turn around, no smirking, no wisecracks, if you have to pee just pee your pants—a Sandman pronouncement shocking each time we heard, provoking gales of nervous laughter through the room.

Of course, this was ninth-grade algebra. We were fourteen, fifteen years old. Nobody in this class was likely to pee his pants.

(Yet we were not so old that the possibility didn’t evoke terror in us. Our faces flushed, we squirmed in our seats hoping not to be singled out for torment by Mr. Sandman.)

It was rare that Mr. Sandman commanded a girl to march to walk the plank. Though Mr. Sandman teased girls, and provoked some (of us) to tears, yet he was not cruel to girls, not usually.

Boys were another story. Boys were Schmutz.

Bobbie Sandusky was Boobie Schmutz. Mike Farrolino was Muck Schmutz. Rick Latour was Ruck Schmutz. Don Farquhar was Dumbo Schmutz.

Was any of this funny? But why did we laugh?