Target

If you're like any 30-something mother, you go to Target on a weekly basis. I take James there every Saturday morning for something. Today, it was to look at Cozy Coupes (you know you're a mom when...) and pick up some baby sunscreen, since I couldn't seem to find the other one I had bought not too long ago. This was after I went to Target yesterday, to pick up some wipes, deoderant and a card for the wedding we went to today.

If you're like any 20-something college graduate, in your first job, you go to Target on a weekly basis. You need this kind of make-up, and maybe a cute, cheap skirt to wear to school the next day because you're sick of your own closet. You go there to pick up tanning lotion, tank tops, pantyhose, new sunglasses, some jewelry.

Target has everything. So that's where I shop. It doesn't draw the Wal-Mart crowd, they carry clothes that keep up relatively well, and it has everything a child could want in their toy aisles. They have good deals, and with coupons, even better deals. I can buy food, something to cook the food in, and something cute to wear while cooking said food... if I want. Which I usually do.

One day, I went into Target, and she was there. Working the register. I thought it funny, considering that when I was a high school student, Target was my first job too. I mentioned that to her as I checked out, while she scanned my things and put them into my plastic sacks.

But as things got weird, and she apparently worked more hours there, I tried to avoid her line. At one point, while standing in line behind four other people, a lead cashier pointed me toward her line. "It looks like she doesn't have as many people in her line, if you'd like to jump over there."

"No thanks, I can wait."

And that's how it usually went.

At some point, I started walking into Target and if I would see her working the registers, I would turn around and walk out. I didn't want to take the chance of 'something' happening. It wasn't worth the $10 bottle of foundation that I needed when I could just run across the street and buy it at Wal-Mart. It wasn't worth the feelings of incredible anxiety. 'Incredible anxiety' being an understatement.

One day, I walked in and she wasn't working. In fact, it was summer, very early in the day, and there was only one register open. And that check-out lane was being manned by one of her friends.

This same friend of hers had, a few months prior, asked to talk to me in the hallway after class. So standing in the hallway, I let this student berate me, telling me that I needed to stop being so negative to the class, and that he didn't appreciate it. I needed to be more positive. I needed to come into class with a big fucking smile on my face. Two months after my dad died. Two months of agonizing hell I was going through, all while trying to plaster a big ole' smile on my face when I walked into my classes.

Then he said to me, "We know what you're going through. We've all lost someone Mrs. Engels." Did I mentioned my dad had just died?

If anyone has ever described to you what the stages of grief are like, they cannot do it justice. Any description they give is a gross understatement of what it's like. When you experience it, you don't go through the typical stages as described by health professionals who have spent thousands of dollars studying it. Grief is not something that happens to you. Grief becomes you.

And I sat there, and took his verbal beating. A beating that I later found out was on behalf of his "friend." The one girl who was making my life hell.

The only response I could muster was, "No. You have no idea what it's like." And I walked off so they couldn't see me cry. And minutes later, had to splash water on my face, suck it up in my office, and walk into another choir and teach them for another 50 minutes. With a big ole' smile on my face.

A few days later, this friend and this girl wanted to have a meeting with me and an administrator in regard to my response to their "talk" they had with me in the hallway.

When brought to light what really happened during that conversation, my administrator simply said, "That was unacceptable, and that's kicking someone while they're down." He then promptly ended the meeting, and following the students leaving, I told him we needed to get this girl out of my classroom. He agreed.

Long story short, it was agreed upon, by the administration, that this girl would not be in my top ensemble the following year. In fact, she was not going to be in the Vocal Music Department at all. And since I was to not put her name on the "list" for the top ensemble, they would be contacting her to tell her and her parents themselves.

Only they never told this girl. They never told her parents. I remember going into my administrator's office and asking him if he had contacted the parents. He said yes. He said yes. They didn't have the common decency to call the parents and tell them that this girl had been harassing me beyond measure, therefore she did not have the right to be in my classroom anymore.

So when I put the list up, and her name wasn't there, the administration had put a target on my back. And the parents took aim.

A few days later, this friend of this girl came rushing into my office. My heart started beating faster, my palms got sweaty, and I had no idea what was about to happen. He was crying, wanting to talk. I kept my office door open as he spilled apology after apology regarding everything that had happened. I was his favorite teacher, he said. He was sorry, he said. He wanted me to know that I had changed his life is so many ways, he said.

He was sorry, he said.

So that day, in Target, when this friend was working, I felt safe going through his check-out lane. I asked him what he was doing that summer. He was quitting Target to work at Wells Fargo, he said. I asked him how his summer was treating him. He was having a lot of fun, he said.

He was sorry, he said. 

On July 22, 2009, I got a phone call from my administrator, asking me to come in to school and talk to him. This administrator stated the parents of this girl had come forward and complained that I had gone through her friend's lane at Target, and had spoken badly about this girl (not true). I had said some "pretty horrible" things (not true). Some things about this girl not being in the top ensemble (not true). Because I had decided not to put her in the top ensemble (not true). Because she was gay (NOT TRUE).

Anger becomes you. 

And I became a different teacher after that day. I felt like I could not trust anything students said. I didn't know what students were her friends and therefore, on her side, and what students could see through the bullshit. I didn't know who I could trust. Not necessarily in what I said, but what I did. All of a sudden, all of my movements were being scrutinized, and I had no idea by whom.

It was a slippery slope that left me devastated, paranoid, and a different human being. I didn't walk into Target for two years after that. Even after I left Southeast Polk, where I knew she would not be able to do anything more. Even after I knew she had graduated, and I knew she could do nothing more. She was still tormenting me, in my own head.

All of a sudden, she was everywhere. She was in my mouth, putting words there that I had never said. She was in my head, making me think twice about everything I did. She was in my sight, always thinking she was lurking somewhere. And then, when it had been a few months and she hadn't truly been in my sight for awhile, she was there in real life. Hy-Vee, in the card aisle. Driving alongside me on the road.

Walking into Target now, I still do a double-take. It's better than it was for a long time, and I know that if I were ever to come into brief, passing contact with her, I would be safe. I have hundreds of pages of documentation, rulings in my favor, blatant lies she told that were proven false. I was victorious, after all.

And that is an understatement.