Each and Every Morning

Raymond Tekorako Ruka

Every morning, I would wake up dreading what was coming, and every night was exactly the same. 

When I bedded down with another brother, Top and Tail because beds had always been, it seemed to me, at least, to always be less than the bodies requiring them. Then came the same when dressing for school as if we were just playing around at home. Later, however, dress codes or uniforms as they became known, were the rule to be worn by our bigger sister and brothers. 

But, if all you had to wear was the bare minimum at any one time, all the time, you, the child, still got whacked across your outstretched wavering hand in front of the class full of kids, not with anything other than faces of pity because, sure enough, most in the class had been belted with that same leather strap by our bully of a so-called teacher.

 Nay, they even claim today that of a childhood educator named Sanders, or more correctly and don’t ever you forget kids because you all know what will happen, Mr. Sanders: DON’T YOU. At other times he would without warning rise and stand from behind his own desk and he would throw a hard rubber ball at any kid he presumed was 

misbehaving or even just talking out of turn as mere kids are wont to do without any type of malice, disrespect, or even forethought, other than just plain old ancient kiddie innocence trying to share with another seated at the desk behind him or her, so excited were they, that he, or she had to immediately share… or pee their pants so excited they were. 

And then, for this tyrant of a so-called educator (who just happened to be married to a member of the supervisory team), never had descriptors as imposing as that of a committee. So, we children in those times long thankfully gone, were none the wiser, and the bully in him was even more so allowed to run free among its virgin stock.

There they all were, for the picking, especially if those innocents were fooled, in their lack mostly because of their unknowing, their lack of fully understanding that this adult behavior was not the norm, after all – and if it were, then why wasn’t the same behavior reflected at home?  In fact, quite the opposite, where we fledglings had our first view of adult indecent behavior in the guise of nothing but that of a teacher, who, according to all accepted standards of care and not realizing it for what it was:

Indecent acts being perpetrated against young, innocent and awkward children!

You may have long gone, Mr. Sanders, bless your soul, but the memory of your indecent behavior sadly lives on. These memories are the pivotal perpetrated acts against innocents that take on lives of their own, in the form of memories handed down through the ages. 

All your fellow professional colleagues, and auxiliary staff at the time, they too, will be unfairly burdened to wear the scars of your tyrannical and cowardly behavior as well, because they would have, or should have known better, or even shared during the intervals in the privacy of the staff’s common room, your indecent acts being perpetrated against innocent and bewildered babes. 

The things you did to us are seared in memories, too innocent to understand fully at the time, of the enormity and indeed, what they truly were, but they happened time and time again and for that Mr. Sanders, we surviving, elderly kids now promise you this:

We have all become better parents when we came of age and I am certain this writing of mine will cause a cascade of similar memories of nothing but regret, least we innocents who each faced your cowardly wrath, incite a floodgate of  similar stories, each one unique, of this classroom bully who ruled the roost of what circumstances, at the time, allowed for him to capitalize and vent that illness that enamored him 

to ill-treat babies entrusted by our parents and the School Board, and fellow Staff Members alike, to help build a better citizenry for the society that those babes themselves would, in turn, when their own time came due, they would endeavor to continue as each new generation is charged to make their own contribution, so there are fewer Mr. Sanders standing in front of a class of innocents and pruning instead of tilling the minds of every  innocent child who sits at a desk in a school dependent on learning instead of hiding away in the background in plain sight of the Ogre who relishes what he must have thought was an authority handed to him, or her, and is quietly indebted for the lawful opportunity he or she  receives to rather assault instead, by default, teaching children whose parent or parents have accepted to be  the norm of every classroom at every school in the Land, to the certified qualification of the said teacher to stand and teach in any school classroom or venue in the world that is verses by a board of colleagues and parents as well as the students themselves.

Hopefully in the coming years rules and laws for a minimum standard at least of teaching care, will be written and passed without the assaulting and demeaning part. 

May it be a requirement that has been implemented, to ensure that those unwell adults, who through a more unwell intention, don’t hold any type of guardianship of our 

children sitting in their classroom expectantly waiting with an edge of excitement and apprehension, to learn at the level they can and not have the devil himself dressed in the guise of respectability have no access to our Angels sitting before him.

Raymond D Ruka Tekorako