The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers

The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers

            The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers was legendary among the students of Portly Middle. It was said that the power of his gaze could stop a substitute mid-tirade and put him in a trance, and that the sound of his voice had the power to make the hardiest of subs tremble.

            No one had ever seen the The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers up close. He had long since graduated from Portly, and it was assumed that he was now using his skills on those subs that frequented high schools.

            Bobbie Miller the Eighth Grader claimed that The Boy was her older brother, but most people stopped believing her when she said that her brother had graduated high school the year before she’d started at Portly.

            To be fair, no one remembered how old The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers actually was. No one knew what his real name was, and no one could point him out in any of the yearbooks in the library. Most of the students at Portly had come to the conclusion that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers was a title that had to be earned, rather than having been attached to any one particular student, and subsequently, many students decided that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers had never actually existed.

            But the legend of his gaze and his voice continued to guide the students of Portly, like King Arthur guides the rest of us, by reminding them that there might have been a champion of such notoriety. It was the sort of thing that gave people hope and inspired them to stand up for themselves, and once in a great while, a boy or girl might feel particularly inspired to become the next Boy.

            On such a day, Thomas Hisselpenny stood up in the center aisle of his classroom, small hands balled into fists, and glared his most menacing glare at the wispy man who wore red paper Substitute Badge on the pocket of his button up shirt.

Mr. M was one of the frequent faces that the students saw. He was generally good natured, if a little soft spoken, and easy to run over, if you knew how to do it. Thomas figured that if there was one substitute that he could tame, it would be Mr. M. 

            Thomas’s gaze was somewhat impeded by the fringe of blond hair that hung in his eyes, but it was steady. “We don’t have to do anything you tell us,” he said boldly as he could manage.

            Thomas might have managed to sound impressive if one of his front teeth wasn’t missing, or if he wasn’t half the size of most of the other students in the sixth grade. But as it stood, his words were kind of whistley, and his voice was high and meek.

            A tug on Thomas’s sweater forced him to pull his gaze away from the substitute. The hand that tugged belonged to Harold Knightly, the closest thing to The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers that this generation of Portly Middle had seen. Harold had slayed a sub who had really been a dragon, and freed one of the most favoured teachers of the school from a cookie jar. But Harold Knightly the Dragon Slayer lacked the sort of… finesse… that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers had been known for.

            He motioned for Thomas to sit down, a look of concern in his glass-magnified eyes.

            But Thomas would not sit down. If Harold was going to slay dragons, then he was going to be a Substitute Tamer.

            Mr. M, unfortunately, was not impressed by Thomas’s gaze or his whistley voice. He crossed his arms over his chest and returned that gaze with one of his own. It was not masked by his hair, which was combed back, and it had years of experienced gazing to hold it fast in place. When he spoke, his voice was as quiet as it ever was, calm, and unassuming. But somehow it was different. Somehow, his voice rode thunder.

He asked Thomas, “What exactly are you trying to do?” And Thomas suddenly felt queasy.

“Uh…” Thomas forced himself to swallow, and sank back into his chair. “I was just…nothing. Sorry, sir…Sorry.”

            He sank further, doing his best to disappear, to meld into the chair, or sink into the floor under his desk, and never be seen again.

            “He was trying to be The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers,” Lily Mae explained, her prim little voice decorated in matter-of-fact. “He’s jealous because Harold is a Dragon Slayer, and he wants to be a hero, too.”

            “That’s preposterous,” Mr. M with the air of those who are well-informed, “Dragons don’t exist.”