The Evil Substitute

I was patiently waiting for my teacher to come in. While I was doodling, the door opened, but it was not my teacher. Instead, a lady with big fat fingers and a too-tight dress walked in. I was about to ask who she was, when she put up one of her big fat hands, and ordered silence. I guess she was scary enough that she could do that, so everybody, including the biggest chatbox in the grade, Lillian shut up. “I am Ms. Bigfangar and I am your substitute.” Ms. Bigfangar said.
I chuckled, I better call her Ms. Big Finger, her fingers are as big as sausages. Ms Big Finger noticed my chuckle and immediately went redder than a tomato. “Young man, what are you chuckling about?” she asked. I swear when she talked that I saw fangs in her mouth. “I was just chuckling about how we got such a great subsitute for today.” I said. “Ha. That’s the oldest excuse in the book!” she exclaimed. “Stay for detention today.” Ms. Big Finger said, as she wrote something in a notepad. I was shocked, but didn’t say anything.
“Should we get on with attendance?” asked Ms. Big Finger. Nobody said anything, and Ms. Big Finger smiled. As she got through the list, there was only one person absent. “Nick Johnassen?” she asked . .or more like yelled. There was no “here” and Ms. Big Finger’s lips tightened. “I ask, WHERE IS NICK!” she yelled. A boy named Karim hesitantly raised his hand. “He’s n-not here t-today b-because he’s s-sick..” Karim said shakily.
Ms. Big Finger put another mark in her notepad, he’ll be having three days worth of detention when your teacher comes back.” she said. I would’ve told her that our teacher, Ms. Kraken, would never give Nick three days of detention for being absent, but I didn’t have the guts to. Then, without even telling us, Ms. Big Finger started the math lesson.
She was writing really easy ADDITION problems on the board. 1st grade problems. And we were 5TH graders!

9+7=
4+6=
7+2=

And so on, until there were about ten problems on the board. I mean, it was easy enough that Jon and Lisa, the least-smartest kids in my class who had trouble with multiplication, were raising their hands eagerly. Ms. Big Finger called on someone, and they finished the problems in ten seconds, then she went on. Next she wrote down ten easy subtraction problems. Then she handed us a sheet of paper. There were 100 long division problems on it. “You have fifteen minutes to finish this, if you don’t you will stay until 5:00 today cleaning the school. I’m sure you all have the potential to be a janitor. I see you won’t get anywhere in life..” Ms. Big Finger said, yawning. I was astonished, this lady was not only mean, but RUDE!
It was October, and we had barely done practice on long division, and Ms. Big Finger wanted us to do this stuff? But even if we did know long division, I think it’s impossible to finish 100 long division problems in fifteen minutes. Well, maybe, if you were a long division math-whiz maybe. By now i’m thinking that this lady doesn’t even know how to teach.
Those fifteen minutes, I worked harder than I ever did in my life. What Ms. Big Finger would do if we weren’t finished . . would be scary, that’s all I knew. What’s worse, is that Ms. Big Finger was walking around, her big eyes staring at kids working, and that was seriously creepy. When Ms. Big Finger started to near me, sweat started to trickle down my neck. “Stop sweating!” yelled Ms. Big Finger. “I-I’m just hot.” I said in a small voice. “Liar!” said Ms. Big Finger. I wanted to yell at her that I was in fact not lying. I actually was hot. Her giant body hovering over me produced enough heat for me to be hot. But I admit, the sweating was from the anxiety.
“WE WILL NOW BEGIN SOCIAL STUDIES!” yelled Ms. Big Finger. I covered my ears, the sound was just too much. “Young man. Why are you covering your ears? Stay late tomorrow organizing the bookshelves.” Ms. Big Finger said.
Then I was really mad. She didn't even let me explain, but even if she did, I doubt she’d be satisfied with my explanation. If I was in a cartoon, there would be smoke coming out of my ears, that would show Ms. Big Finger how mad I was and tell her to knock it off. Unfortunately, I was not in a cartoon. But fortunately, if I was in a cartoon, and there was smoke coming out of my ears, that would show Ms. Big Finger I was mad, and she would get REALLY mad, so it’s good i’m not in a cartoon.
To start Social Studies, Ms. Big Finger passed out one sheet of paper to everyone, and told us to write down the names of all the cities in Italy. I wondered why we had to do this. Yesterday, we were studying famous explorers from Mexico. I don’t think this was even in the lesson book. I decided to confront Ms. Big Finger. “Um. Ms. Big Finger. We were studying Mexican Explorers yesterday, how come we’ve moved on to Italy?” I asked. I took in a deep breath. This might be a whipping of words. “Well, young man. I believe since I have an Italian descent, we should study Italy! It is very important to me. I don’t care if you guys don’t like it. But I like it, so we’re going to do it.” Ms. Big Finger said.
What she said really didn’t surprise me. I had known Ms. Big Finger for about one hour, and it felt like i’ve known her forever. I wrote down the four cities I knew in Italy.

-Rome
-Florence
-Milan
-Venice

Really, those are the only cities I know in Italy. I guessed most of the people in the class got about three or four. Maybe 5 or 6 if they knew Italy kind of well. I didn’t have to wait long for the timer to be rang. Ms. Big Finger commanded everyone to stand up and read what they had. I heard many Romes, Florences, Milans, a few Venices, and some Pisas. When the recess bell rang, the entire class was SO happy to get away from Ms. Big Finger. The girls probably went to their friends from other classes to gossip about Ms. Big Finger, and the boys would go to their friends and do the same thing. As for me, I was going to do something else.
I got my lunchbox from my locker and headed straight toward the principal’s office. I was going to complain about Ms. Big Finger. “May I see Principal Gibbons please?” I asked Mrs. Garcia, the office secretary. “Of course.” she said. “Matt. A child wants to see you!” Mrs. Garcia chirped. Principal Gibbons came out of his office and invited me in.
When I sat in his chair, he asked me why I wanted to see him. I cleared my throat and answered. “Well, Principal Gibbons. Our substitute teacher, Ms. Big Finger, I mean Bigfangar, well, she seems like she doesn’t really know how to teach.” I said. “How so?” asked Mr. Gibbons. I explained to him how she said Nick would get three days of detention, and how she gave us 100 problems to do in 15 minutes, and about every other thing that happened.
Principal Gibbons rubbed his beard. “I’ll go look at her files.” he said. I heard many ‘Hmm’s’ and ‘Really’s’ and about every other sound like that for a few minutes. Then, Principal Gibbons cleared his throat. “Well, you seem to be observing on the right track. Ms. Bigfangar does not have a teaching license, or any other license she has claimed to have.” he said. I jumped up. “What does this mean?” I asked. “Well, this means that Ms. Bigfangar will not be teaching you for the rest of the day.
I whooped and hollered and did every other happy exclamation until Principal Gibbons told me to calm down. “I have a PA announcement to make.” he said. I quited down as he asked to. “Ms. Bigfangar please report to my office.” said Principal Gibbons.
The rest of the day didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that I had gotten rid of Ms. Big Finger.