The Very Worst Teacher I Ever Met

[BobTheSubgenius]

46. It's amazing how little - or quite a bit in a brief amount of time is maybe better - that it takes

to ruin a child's confidence. When I was young, I used to spend some time each summer at this fabulous lake on Vancouver Island with a friend of my mother's. Nearby was a family who had near-identical twins, that may well have been identical, were it not for a big scar on one's forehead.

A double-bit axe clonked her when she got too close behind the chopper. I didn't know much else about either of them because, you know....cooties. But what I did know was that this had happened to her, and I knew about a related incident at school.

Once, when she did poorly at some test, project, or what have you, the teacher told her she'd been stupid ever since her head was cracked so hard with that axe. It absolutely crushed her, and she had no expectation of anything but failure after that.

I have no idea what happened to her or her twin. The last time I saw them, I was about 10, but I've often wondered...and hoped she got someone into her life to build her back up.